a performance and workshop by Eirlys Rhiannon, local folk singer & musician, community gardener and top cook, active in Bristol this last decade (and sadly soon to leave these shores for a while).

Two Bristol Shows:

Wednesday 21 July 2010, 7pm, at Easton Community Centre, Kilburn Street, Easton, Bristol BS5
Thursday 22 July 2010, 7pm, at Kebele Kulture Project, 14 Robertson Road, Easton, Bristol BS5
The event starts sharply at 7.30pm both nights.Tickets £5/donation (no-one turned away for lack of funds).
Donations from ticket sales of the Bristol shows will be going to Bristol Radical History, Bristol Anarchist Bookfair, Easton Community Allotment, Eastside Roots, Kebele, and Royate Hill Community Allotment

Each event has two parts. A performance featuring personal stories and songs, then a short workshop about how we make our survival stories.

Survival Tales

To survive in this world, we each create stories.
Our stories affect people around us, and
in turn we get affected by the stories we hear and see every day.
But there’s a new, and old, challenge looming:
to realise that ‘how we live’ is also ‘how we kill’.
This challenge is phenomenally frightening.
To protect ourselves, we create safe stories:
‘the scientists are lying’, ‘the government will sort it out’, ‘this product will help’.

But the challenge remains.

We need to decide how we live, but how do we make decisions?
Is this version of democracy the best we can do?
Who’s in charge? Can we trust any of our solutions?
Can we learn anything from history?
And does anyone have a super-hero cape in my size?
How do we tell the noose and the lifebelt apart?

Survival Tales is a series of small, intimate performance events, designed to take place in unusual venues, including living rooms, community gardens and social centres. More info here.

BOOKFAIR 2010 - CALLOUT NO.2

Dear campaign groups, networks, workers, activists, distros, and above all PEOPLE!

Your Bookfair needs you.

The third annual Bristol Anarchist Bookfair will happen on Saturday September 11th at Hamilton House, 80 Stokes Croft, Bristol. It is from 10.30am to 6.00pm and the bookfair collective wants you there.

The date of the event draws near, just nine weeks to go now. The deadline for applications for stalls & workshops is the 9th of August if you want to appear in the programme, as it needs to go off to the printers. (That’s one month away people!)

The sooner we get those applications landing on the doorstep of Bookfair HQ the sooner we can put time into those little details that make Bristol Anarchist Bookfair stand out as a major event in the radical diary of the South-West.

This event will not be a major success without radical groups, publishers and individuals in Bristol and Beyond holding stalls and workshops…so it’s over to you people now.

Please put it high up the agenda of your next meeting, hopefully you will agree to do something, and ideally both a stall and a workshop (or even a film/slideshow/talk/debate/recital/radical walk).

The original full call out is here and the booking form is available on the website - click on Stalls & Workshops.
For help or info e-mail us or contact 0772nine846five65.

Love & Rage
The Bookfair Collective

Cafe and Film - MAGGOTS & MEN - from 7pm at The Factory
The Bookfair collective and the awesome Fin @ Bath present the challenging film ‘Maggots & Men’ (2009, 54 mins, USA), described as:
“An experimental historical narrative set in post-revolutionary Russia, re-tells the story of the 1921 uprising of the Kronstadt sailors with a subtext of gender anarchy. A thoughtful homage to Soviet silent era directors and artists of the Russian avant-garde, the film explores themes of re-invention, revolution, community, and corruption.”

Check out the film website for interesting info on the making of the film and some history. There’s also a review of the film from the 2010 BFI lesbian & gay film festival.

It kicks off at the wonderful Factory with a cafe at 7pm. The address is Cave Street, Bristol BS2 8RU

After the film why not nip onto your bike and catch….

A diy fundraiser at The White Hart in Easton
This is a benefit for Bristol & south Wales Hunt Sabs and Bristol ABC. Doors around 7.30pm, bands from around 8.30pm to midnight. Its a fiver in on the door, and no doubt there’ll be some stalls from the two causes, and maybe more.
Expect some loud punk, crust and thrash from the likes of Kismet H.C / Death Job / Mutiny Plot / This Ends here.
The White Hart is at 181 Whitehall Rd, Easton, Bristol BS5 9BJ
When your brain cells stop bouncing why not get involved with the 2 groups represented?

Once you’ve recovered on Saturday, cruise along to Eastville Park from 3 to 7pm for a mini-folk festie, BBQ and even cider. The music is free and it comes from the excellent Kebele Sound. Details here.

Then round off your weekend at the Sunday Kebele vegan cafe from 6.30pm. After dinner there’s an evening of film and discussion about direct actions on the railways against climate chaos and nuclear power hosted by Bristol and Bath Rising Tide. More info here.

Anarchy. DIY. Easy innit !

Tuesday 15 June, from 7 to 9pm - bookfair collective organising meeting.
Regular collective meet to plan & organise this years bookfair. There’s plenty to do, so keen and willing anarchists who’d like to get involved are more than welcome! Come along and meet/join us, at Kebele social centre, 14 Robertson Rd, Bristol BS5 6JY.

Sunday 20 June, from 6pm - solstice eve party and bookfair fundraiser.
Organised by the Bastard Squad collective, its at The Croft, doors from 6pm, film at 6.30pm, four bands from 8pm. £5 quid on the door. Full details here.

draft fist poster

Draft bookfair posters

draft historic poster

Here’s a couple of draft bookfair posters. Tell us what you think of them?

This year we’ll be printing 1 or 2 colour posters for the bookfair, and we’ll use one of the posters as the front of the flyer. As you can see both need a bit more work, cleaning up images, changes to text, and so on. We also hope to have a couple of other designs ready to discuss at the meeting on 15 June.

You’ll also note a bit of a potential tie-in with Bristol Radical History Group. This is still being discussed, but we hope it comes off. If it does it will mean having a small zone of stalls at the bookfair dedicated to local diy & radical history publishers, and also a meeting room dedicated to topics they are interested in (same as idea as Bristol Indymedia running a room like last year) - this would cover both local radical history, and the art/practicalities/skills of diy publishing.

Lastly, we’ll also probably come up with more simple black & white poster designs that can be copied up by anyone. Alternatively of course design your own, let us have the image and we’ll post it up on this site!

This is your invite from the Bastard Squad Collective…to a Solstice Eve birthday party for Fin and Myles, and the Bristol Anarchist Bookfair 2010 fundraiser volume I.

Sunday June 20 at The Croft, 117-119 Stokes Croft, Bristol BS1 3RW
EARLY START: Doors open 6pm, film 6.30pm, first band 8pm. 5 quid on the door.

Film showing from 6.30pm is “Maggots and Men” a re-imagining of the 1921 Kronstadt sailor uprising with a twist of gender anarchy!

Live bands:
GUARAPITA (incendiary Latin-influenced ska-punk, Venezuala via Paris)

POWER IS POISON (belting Dutch anti-fascist punk)

THREAT MANIFESTO (searing melodic hardcore from the Valleys)

THIS ENDS HERE (fresh up and d-beatin’ yer head in)
Plus stalls and bookfair info. Yer gonna love it!

Saturday 11th September, Hamilton House, 80 Stokes Croft, BS1 3QY,

10.30am-5.30pm

This is a callout to potential stallholders, and workshop/meeting organisers. Please apply now! Everyone else keep the day free, come down, take part in the discussions, browse the stalls and join in the fun.

Full details about the Bookfair can be found at:

http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

including booking forms, venue and travel info, publicity, other bookfair events and more.

Graffitti on an empty office block near the city centre

IT’S THE TORIES, STUPID!

We are in the midst of the worst worldwide crisis of capitalism for 80 years, the Conservatives are back in Downing Street and the so called Liberal Democrats have shown their true colours by making a grab for power at any cost. Our new leaders are promising deep cuts in services and spending to keep the ruling classes afloat. This will impoverish Britain’s working class in the same way as the last time the Tories were in power! From fear of terrorism to fear of immigrants, they are using every trick in the book to keep us in line.

A TRUE COALITION

Bristol Anarchist Bookfair is the South-West’s biggest radical event and we need you. If you are a part of an activist group, campaign group, art group, book or merchandise distributor, and you organise along Anarchist principles, we want you there. Our booking form is available from the top right-hand corner of the website.

As always table hire is cheap and room hire for talks, workshops and films is completely free.

Last year we estimated well over 600 people came through the doors and this year we are situated on one of Bristol’s busiest streets in the city’s alternative hub. So don’t miss out!

THE VENUE

Abandoned for years, this former office block is now home to a cafe/bar, dance and art studios and events spaces. This is Bristol Anarchist Bookfair’s largest venue yet. Spread over two floors we have room for a café and social area, a crèche and three meeting/film rooms. The venue is completely accessible with a lift and plenty of space between stalls.

Hamilton House is situated on Stokes Croft, the “Cultural Quarter” of Bristol. It is famed for its street art, music scene and many nearby autonomous spaces including the volunteer run Cube microplex the anarchist-run Freeshop, Emporium Art Gallery, Magpie Gallery and the newly opened “Factory” Social Centre. Stokes croft recently hit the headlines when anti-capitalist protesters disrupted plans to open a new Tesco store nearby, by converting the proposed site into a squat and live music venue, culminating in activists clashing with bailiffs and cops in what local media dubbed “The Battle of Stokes Croft”.

CHANGE REALLY IS POSSIBLE

Over thirty stalls, workshops, debates, films and a café. Extensive selections of books, pamphlets, mags & zines, info, music, badges & merchandise. The future is not set in stone, change is always possible. Anarchists believe the basis for the future can be found in co-operation, solidarity, direct action, creativity, resistance & mutual aid. Come and see what we have to offer, you only have to step through the door…

For more info, contact: bristolanarchistbookfair@riseup.net

Download:

2010-booking-form (OpenOffice)

2010-booking-form (Word)

2010 booking-form (RTF)

Here is the text:

Bristol Anarchist Bookfair - 11th September 2010

At Hamilton House 80 Stokes Croft BS1 3QY - 10.30am to 6.00pm

Booking form for stalls & workshops

The Bookfair welcomes applications from groups and individuals to run stalls & hold work-shops at the Bookfair. Priority will be given to anarchist campaigns, groups and distros, but there will be space for other not-for-profit booksellers & campaign stalls, and for workshops run by other groups/individuals that operate in a non-hierarchical way. Stall & workshop requests will go to a Collective meeting for ratification and the outcome advised.

A. Stalls

Stallholders can access the venue from 9.00am and must leave by 6.00pm. Tables will be pre-allocated, and are limited in number, so you may not get all the tables you ask for, but we do have more space this year. Note that we will have 1 table set aside for ‘Free Info’.

Cost: (please circle what describes your status, no cheating please! Tables are 1.8m x 0.6m approx)

£15.00 per table for National Groups, Campaigns & Distros, Publishers & Bookshops

Or 2 tables for £25.00

£7.00 per table for South West Groups, Campaigns & Distros

Your Details:

Organisation/name & address:

Contact person, phone no & email:

Tables required / £ amount enclosed:

Payment should be by cheque payable to ‘Bristol Bookfair’ only, or well concealed cash

B. Workshops

We presently have 2 rooms holding 30 plus people seated in each. Workshops will start at 11am and run for an hour unless otherwise agreed, ending at 6pm. There is no charge. Where two or more similar workshops are proposed we will encourage the proposers to co-operate in organising just one. We expect organisers to encourage participation and discussion. If you don’t explain what your workshop about it will significantly reduce your chance of getting a slot allocated. We will confirm workshops & times in early August.

Your details:

Organisation/name & address:

Contact person, phone no & email:

Proposed workshop title, format and content:

Preferred time & length of workshop(no guarantees!):

Workshop description (50 words, for the programme):

Please return this completed form and payment for stalls to:

Bristol Anarchist Bookfair Collective, c/o 14 Robertson Rd, Bristol BS5 6JY

To have your full details in the programme we need your info by 9th August!

Any queries/problems? Please email us at bristolanarchistbookfair@riseup.net

http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org

The egg silly!
So we have another christian festival upon us. 3 or 4 months after the arrival of the son of god via a virgin birth, now we’ve got his death, resurrection and departure to heaven. You couldn’t make this nonsense up if you tried.

As with all christian festivals, this one recuperates yet another pagan festival. In this case its a mixture of the spring equinox and a goddess of fertility (Ostara or Eostre), which in olden days was naturally a time of partying and good food (rabbits - a symbol of fertility)! Now every year, on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, we get Easter Sunday. With added chocolate. Nowadays of course, capital grasps every opportunity to make a profit, so chocolate (made from raw materials expropriated from poor countries) and flowers (flown in from poorer countries) top the list.

Of course, you can just imagine how Roman Catholic priests welcomed the addition of chocolate, “Come into my study for some chocs little boy, but first suck this…”. So this song is for the Pope, god’s representative on earth….

CRASS ‘Reality Asylum’, banned from the1978 ‘Feeding of the 5000′ EP, but released as a double single in 1979

I am no feeble Christ, not me
He hangs in glib delight upon his cross, upon his cross,
Above my body, lowly me
Christ forgive, forgive?
Holy He, He holy, He holy?
Shit He forgives, Forgive? Forgive?
I? I? Me? I? I vomit for you Jesu
Christy Christus
Puke upon your papal throne
Wrapped I am in the muddy cloud
Of hellish genocide
Petulant child
I have suffered for you
Where you have never known me
I too must die
Will you be shadowed in the arrogance of my death?
Your valley truth
What light pass those pious heights?
What passing bells for these in their trucks?
For you lord.
You are the flag-bearer of these nations
One against the other that die in the mud
No piety. No deity
Is that your forgiveness?
Saint. Martyr. Goat. Billy.
Forgive? Shit he forgives
He hangs upon his cross
In self-righteous judgment
Hangs in crucified delight
Nailed to the extend of His vision
His cross. His manhood. His violence. Guilt. Sin.
He would nail my body upon his cross
As if I might have waited for him in the garden
As if I might have perfumed His body
Washed those bloody feet
This woman that he seeks
Suicide visionary. Death reveller. Rake. Rapist.
Gravedigger. Earthmover. Lifefucker. Jesu.
You scooped the pits of Auschwitz
The soil of Treblinka is rich in your guilt
The sorrow of your tradition
Your stupid humility is the crown of thorn we all must wear.
For you. Ha. Master. Master of gore. Enigma. Stigma. Stigmata. Errata. Eraser.
The cross is the mast of our oppression.
You fly there, vain flag.
You carry it, wear it on your back, Lord. Your back.
Enola is your gaiety.
Suffer little children (to come unto me)
Suffer in that horror. Hirohorror. Hirrohiro. Hiroshimmer. Shimmerhiro.
Hiroshima. Hiroshima. Hiroshima. Hiroshima.
The bodies are your delight
The incandescent flame is the spirit of it
They come to you Jesu. To you
The nails are the only trinity
Hold them in your corpsey gracelessness
The image that I have had to suffer
These nails at my temple
The cross is the virgin body of womanhood
That you defile
In your guilt you turn your back
Nailed to that body
Lame-arse Jesus calls me sister
There are no words for my contempt
Every woman is a cross in filthy theology
He turns His back on me in His fear
His vain delight is that pain I bear
Alone He hangs. His choice. His choice
Alone. Alone. His voice. His voice
He shares nothing, this Christ
Sterile. Impotent. Fucklove prophet of death
He’s the ultimate pornography
He. He. Hear us Jesus
You sigh alone in your cockfear
You lie alone in your cuntfear.
You cry alone in your womanfear.
You die alone in you manfear.
Alone Jesu, alone
In your cockfear. Cuntfear. Womanfear. Manfear.
Alone in your fear. Alone in your fear. Alone in your fear.
Your fear. Your fear. Your fear. Your fear. Your fear. Your fear. Your fear.
Warfare. Warfare. Warfare. Warfare. Warfare.
Jesus died for his own sins. Not mine.

Listen to it on YouTube, with video interpretations 1 and 2

Meanwhile there is an apparent growth of anarchist & alternative bookfairs happening in the UK and abroad. This is a positive move for 2 reasons. Firstly it indicates increased co-operation between different anarchist trends to put them on. Secondly it indicates a growing interest in anarchism and alternatives to the failings of capital and the state - not surprising perhaps given the state of the economy, and planet. This doesn’t mean a revolution is around the corner, but its a move in the right direction. Here’s a list of few upcoming events we’ve heard of:
Bradford on 10 April
Toronto on 9 to 11 April
New York on 17 April
Gent on 17 April
Paris on 8 May
Sunderland on 8 May
Biel on 15 & 16 May
Sheffield on 22 May
Montreal on 29 & 30 May
and there are more here

Well we nearly stormed one of them...

The article below is fairly short, sharp and to the point in its critique of last year’s G20 protests and the ‘movement’. It first appeared today on UK Indymedia, the author is unknown. However it articulates what some people, at least, are thinking, and is reposted here to generate discussion. (Images added by Bookfair person. For post-G20 info on arrests and Ian Tomlinson see the Bristol ABC blog).

You may disagree? Perhaps you were on the roof at Jesters No-Tesco squat, or out trashing other Tescos? A climate camp veteran perhaps? Or maybe you’ve come out as an anarchist-communist or class-struggle anarchist and just joined/set up a new group? Maybe from where you are standing the future looks bright and the revolution is just one more action away? In which case thats great, get stuck in, may the force be with you. If you’d like to disagree with this (unknown) author then send in your view.

The Summer of Rage? A critical look at the G20 London protests one year on (original article here)

Did anyone notice the summer of rage? Like all British summers, it was disappointingly non-existent: a few letters in the guardian, a climate camp of Cath Kidston tents and, to top it all, hardly a day of sun.

At the beginning of the year, the forecast was hopeful. We were told we were in the midst of a crisis. Each week another bank/factory/country went bankrupt. And everywhere a response: riots in Greece, unrest in France, occupations in Italy. Even in Britain, people were responding. The unions, the Stop the War Coalition, were losing control: workers went on wildcat strikes and February’s Stop the War trudge turned into something approaching a riot.

And we were told that the summer would kick off at the G20 counter-summit, when the recession’s ‘victims’ would come out to fight. We were told when, where and how we would protest; and the invite was made by no less than the country’s most senior police officer, delivered via the great British media. Mobs and cells of hate-filled, masked-up, dirty sofa-owning anarchists, who recruit children and foment protest, were to be hosted by hundreds of riot cops, all leave cancelled. The date: April Fools’ Day.

Any suspicion over accepting an invitation from a cop was forgotten in our desperate hope that this time it was for real, that this was the beginning of the end of capitalism -after all, didn’t they say something like that on Newsnight?- that this would be a counter-summit that went over the summit and out the other side.

We made our separate ways there and our separate ways home. Gone were the days of the anti-road protests, when the meeting at Bank was the culmination of something more -a mass movement apparently moving somewhere. All that united us now was nostalgia, a sense of not being quite sure what we were doing, where we were going -Have we met before? Shall we dance? Whose streets?- rage diffused to confusion.

A decade on, and the terrain hadn’t changed -we were even using the same map- still ‘Squaring Up to the Square Mile’, acting out the same roles, in the same place, but this time the cops were directing. While in those ten years we had lost any kind of strength, the police had been perfecting their response -to learn when to contain, when to hit out, when to arrest, when to take pictures, when to go home.

And they told us why we were there -our battle was with the banks. After all, we were reminded time and time again that this was a crisis not of economics, but of finance; not systemic, but cultural. The Bank of England would play its role as the physical centre of the crisis. Bankers had long ago been auditioned as the baddies: in the media, by the politicians, by the Socialist Worker. Old anarchists were wheeled out by the BBC to warn that bankers would be hung from lampposts, and cops told city workers to disguise themselves in casual clothes, presumably to avoid a hanging. We were provided with a symbolic outlet for the rage -RBS, the baddest of all the bad banks, was left as bait: its windows unboarded.

Seriously tooled up and looking for aggro.

And we fell for it. For every protestor there were five cameras: smash, smash, smash; flash, flash, flash. The climax -again and again on TVs across the country. Each time a little more unsatisfactory, each time a little more removed -they frame us to act, then frame us in photographs. If our action was ever ours in the first place, it certainly wasn’t any longer. Watching from their living rooms, people were replayed the powerlessness of the protestors, the power of the police; the powerlessness of protestors, the power of the police. Later, arrests. The window is repaired. You won’t try that again.

Nearby, Climate Camp looks like a bad memory of the sixties: tents, flowers, samba, baked potatoes… except now there’s a CCTV camera watching it all. But the ‘good protestors’ don’t get away without a good battering. The cops go in with truncheons. The campers, with upraised and open hands, chant the last words of the day: ‘This is not a riot.’

There would be no riots that summer. Any pretensions we might have had about our power were shown to be foolish: we had been got. Nothing is more indicative of this than that somebody was murdered without a response -we hardly even noticed. The repercussion consisted of a couple of funereal marches, a few letters in the guardian, an enquiry in the distant future, a new climate camp that made friends with the cops, and praise for police reform, again -a summer of middle class ‘outrage’ and reconciliation. The cops weren’t afraid of beating to kill, for they knew -as we should- that there would be no fighting back, because there was nothing there to fight back -we were nothing more than those few hours at Bank. ‘We’ do not exist.

Capitalism might be in crisis, but its defences are alive and well. When Newsnight asked whether Marx was right -is this the end of capitalism?- it was proof of the opposite, proof of a confidence that such a question would be answered with little more than knowing chuckles in middle-class living rooms. The real crisis is not in the state, but in resistance.

If whatever it was that turned up at Bank last year -this weak, containable, directionless scene of a ‘scene’- means anything to capitalism, it is as assistance not resistance. And if the cops were fighting anything that day, it was the threat of something else: some other people, some other ways, some other summers.