This week we start Library Night with a 90 minute film, to remind ourselves of struggles going on elsewhere. 7.30 – 9.00
Following that we’ll return to the endless cataloguing because that’s what we do.
We’ve got another film in a fortnight’s time (02/05) as part of a little season of Mayday activities, but we’ll plug that later.
Meanwhile, if you can’t make it to the film, click on the image and it will take you to the Reel News website.
Catalogued books awaiting their final positioning on the shelves
Blending for Freedom
IT operatives, chipping away at the piles of books , producing polished chunks of meta-data
Zines getting collated
Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration (and, also, the 4000th book in our catalogue).
Ok, ok, cataloguing books isn’t everyone’s idea of action.
But someone’s got to take care of the literature.
And, to be honest, today’s library action was so close to our utopian vision that we’d like to repeat the whole thing all over again on Friday 12th April (t.b.c.). “So”, we hear you cry, “what was all this excitement you speak of?”.
Well, readers, for one thing, the 1in12 was like yer actual social centre of your dreams, with folk cataloguing books, some people preparing lovely food for the imminent Freedom Fundraiser meal, and a fanzine publisher (if that’s not too grand a term) cutting, folding and stapling like there’s not tomorrow. Which there is, at a zine fest, obviously.
Those people who get a weird buzz watching the mile-o-meter click over to all the zeros would have been thrilled in that moment when the 4000th book fell under the rubber stamp and incremental numbering machine, and “Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration” took its place in the long list of books which you now have an actual chance of locating within the library, as well as discovering whether it’s available or out on loan (we’ll explain how that works another time).
Which seemed like a bit of synchronicity really, as the trial of the London Critical Mass defendants came to its predictably rubbish and unjust conclusion. Though most weeks there’s appalling news for cyclists, and humans generally, somewhere on the planet, so perhaps not too much for the numerologists to get excited about.
Meanwhile, the Library continues its usual business with a book discussion under the aegis of the Feminist Reading Group on Thursday 21st March (“The Dispossessed” by Ursula LeGuin) and some regular cataloguing and scanning pranks on Thursday 4th April. As referred above, we’re half-planning another all-day cataloguing session on Friday 12th, before we have to clear the decks for a big party night, followed possibly by a book sale on 13th April to help the Library’s non-existent finances.
Leave a comment, send an email or, if that’s your bag and you don’t care who they sell your data to, “like” us on Facebook.
Anarchy 37
Greetings word-fans.
Aside from all the happenings we mentioned in our last posting, we continue to work on bringing the juiciest bits of the 1in12 Library to the wider world by way of our ten-year-old scanning equipment.
Incidentally, we’re aware that these aren’t truly our juicy fruits – the Anarchy magazines we’re currently scanning are all someone else’s work, and we hope the many authors in question, and their descendants (if they’re hoping for that 70-years worth of publishing royalties payola) will take a merciful view of our activities. It’s obvious that others have planned on scanning these journals (have a search on the internet and you’ll see) so we think – by placing them on the Internet Archive in an ad-free neutral zone – we’re doing something which is, on balance, beneficial. We have, at least, been in touch with the original publishers and got a warm tweet in response, so we intend to continue unless a genuine problem arises. Also – we think – the collectors who have left these publications to us probably would prefer that they were widely read rather than locked up in The Special Room.
The tweet of Freedom
So, to cut to the chase, we’ve now scanned issues 1 – 42 of Anarchy magazine, with three exceptions where we don’t (yet) have a copy of the magazine.
We’ve experimented a bit with resolution in the interests of speed and getting the job done – let us know if you think the later copies are noticeably worse than the early ones. We’ll be doing another batch in week or two so we value your feedback.
The files are all text-searchable PDFs (with the usual hilarious OCR errors – sorry) so we hope you’ll be able to make use of them.
Thanks again to Freedom Press – freedompress.org.uk – feedback to library@riseup.net
Anarchy 1 (March, 1961) – Rescuing Galbraith from the conventional wisdom / Sex-and-violence and the origin of the novel (Alex Comfort) / Education, equality, opportunity (John Ellerby) / The ‘new wave’ in Britain (Nicholas Walter)
Anarchy No. 2 missing
Anarchy 3, May 1961 – A Notebook in South Africa (Maurice Goldman) / Africa and the future (Jeremy Westall) / Culture and Community (Nicholas Walter) / Removal of Guilt (Anthony Weaver)
Anarchy 4 – June 1961 – Where the shoe pinches: a discussion of ‘de-institutionalization’ (Colin Ward) / Conflicting strains of anarchist thought (George Molnar) / Africa & the future: A comment ( J.E.)
Anarchy 5 – July 1961 – Brenan’s Spanish Labyrinth (Marie Louise Berneri) / The Congress of Zaragoza (Philip Holgate) / Some Conclusions on the Spanish Collectives (Gaston Leval) / A Peasant Experiment in Anarchist-Communism (H E Kaminski)
Anarchy 6 – August 1961 – A future for cinema? (Ward Jackson) / The anarchism of Jean Vigo (John Ellerby) / Making ‘Circus at Clopton Hall’ (Annie Mygind) / The animated film grows up (Philip Samson) / Making ‘The Little Island’ (Dick Williams) / Luis Bunuel : reality and illusion (Rufus Segar) / Another look at Bunuel (Tristram Shandy) / The innocent eye of Robert Flaherty (C.)
Anarchy 7 – September 1961 – Adventure Playground: a parable of anarchy (C.W.) / New Town Adventure (Annie Mygind) / Adventure in Lollard Street (Shelia Beskine) / The Revolution in Physical Education (Joan Foster)
Anarchy 8 – October 1961 – Anarchists and Fabians: an anniversary symposium / Action anthropology or applied anarchism? (Kevin Maddock) / Erosion inside capitalism (Reg Wright) / George Orwell: an accident in society (Nicholas Walter)
Anarchy 9 – November 1961 – Are we in favour of penal reform? (C.W.) / The captive society (John Ellerby) / Therapeutic communities (Ward Jackson) / Refresher course in jail (Dave Dellinger) / Far from therapeutic (Pat Arrowsmith)
Anarchy 10 – September 1961 – Adventure Playground: a parable of anarchy (C.W.) / New Town Adventure (Annie Mygind) / Adventure in Lollard Street (Sheila Beskine) / The Revolution in Physical Education (Joan Foster)
Anarchy 11 – January 1962 – The World of Paul Goodman – Communitas
Revisited – Youth and Absurdity – Practical Proposals (John Ellerby) / The
Children and Psychology (Paul Goodman) / The Character Builders (Harold
Drasdo) / Summerhill Education vs. Standard Education (A. S. Neil)
Anarchy 12 – February 1962 – Who Are The Anarchists? / The anarchist
personality (Tony Gibson) / The Freedom readership survey / Who will be the
anarchists? (Tristram Shandy) / Reflections on mass media (Martin Small)
Anarchy 13 – March 1962 – Direct action: the make-it-yourself
revolution / The politics of direct action (Peter Cadogan) / Direct action
and the new pacifism (Nicolas Walter) / The habit of direct action (David
Wieck)
Anarchy 14 – April 1962 – Disobedience and the new pacifism (Nicolas
Walter) / The state and society (Colin Ward) / Gandhi on the theory of
voluntary servitude (Gene Sharp)
Anarchy 15 – May 1962 – The work of David Wills (Anthony Weaver) /
Clinical aspects of the work of David Wills (‘Consultant Psychiatrist’) /
Down in the jungle (David Downes) / Do we want happy children? (Dachine
Rainer)
Anarchy 16 – June 1962 – The ethics of anarchism (Bob Green) / The
bounds of possibility (Kenneth Maddock) / Anarchism and the African
(Maurice Goldman) / Africans and anarchism (Henry Dowa) / The poetry of
dissent (Harold Drasdo)
Anarchy 17 – July 1962 – Towards a Lumpen-Proletariat (G.) /
Education vs. the Working Class (Martin Small) / Freedom of Access (Donald
Rooum) / Benevolent Bureaucracy (Maurine Blanke) / CD and CND: Are they
Opposed (G. H. Petch) / Follow-Up: Anarchy & Cinema (Donald
Nicholson-Smith)
Anarchy 18 – August 1962 – Comprehensive schools / Educating the
non-scholastic (H. Raymond King) / Bombed site and comprehensive school
(Winifred Hindley) / A last look round (Sixth-Former) / Some were all right
(Early Leaver) / Eleven-plus and the comprehensive (Parent)/ A senior
concert of the high school of music and art (Paul Goodman) / Down there
with Isherwood (Dachine Rainer) / The anarchists from outside (Nicholas
Harman)
Anarchy 19 – September 1962 – Theatre: anger and anarchy (Nicolas
Walter) / Where civilisation begins (Arnold Wesker) / Room to move about
(David Markham) / The language of persuasion (Harold Drasdo) / To start
wagging and stop tampering (Roger Bray) / Were they way out, way back? (Sam
Weiner & H. W. Morton) / More about freedom of access (Donald Rooum, Eric
Hughes) / On the idea of anarchy (Jeremy Westall)
Anarchy 20 – October 1962 – Non-violence as a reading of history
(Peter Cadogan) / Identity, love and mutual aid (Dachine Rainer) / Freud,
anarchism and experiments in living (Martin Small) / Anarchism: contracting
other relationships (Geoffrey Ostergaard)
Anarchy 21 – November 1962 – Secondary Modern (John Ellerby) /
Jug and clay, or flower? (Anthony Weaver) / 6F. Geog. (Anthony Blond) /
Pops in the classroom (Judith Tudor Hart) / Tomorrow’s Audience (John
Duncan) / A charter for the unfree child (Martin Daniel) / The Sillitoe
thesis (David Downes) / Reflections on authority (Jeremy Westall) /
Reflections on freedom (John C. A. Davey)
Anarchy 22 – December 1962 – A dialogue on anarchy (Maurice Cranston)
/ The role of relationships in Society (Ronald Harvey) / The ethics of
egoism (Donald Rooum) / Snapshot album (Geoffrey Minish) / Anarchist
history: some recent books / Index to ANARCHY, January-December 1962
Anarchy 23 – January 1963 – Housing and helplessness (John Ellerby) /
Do it yourself (Ian Nairn) / Miners who run their own pit (Douglas Stuckey)
/ Direct action for houses: the story of the squatters / We built our own
(Harry Deverson) / What hope for housing societies? (Tristram Shandy) /
Bethnal Green: a museum of housing (Colin Ward) / A man’s ambition must be
small (Jack Robinson) / John Rae and the myths of war (Arthur Uloth)
Anarchy 24 – February 1963 – The Community Of Scholars (Tom Jones),
Stolen fruits of a classical education (Simon Raven), Primitive societies
and social myths (Kenneth Maddock), Schizophrenia; a social disease (John
Linsie)
Anarchy 25 – March 1963 – Homo Aedificans (Harry Baecker) / The Terrible Flaw (Maurice Goldman) / The development and significance of cybernetics (W. Grey Walter) / Shock tactics and pornography (Martin Daniel)
Anarchy 26 – April 1963 – The last Aldermaston (Charles Radcliffe) / What has
it got to do with the bomb? (Brian Richardson) / The factory for peace (Tom
McAlpine) / How to sell your way to slavery (Ian Sainsbury) / Thoreau’s
politics of the upright man (Richard Drinnon).
Anarchy 27 – May 1963 – The Teen Canteen: 1. The real challenge (Joe
Benjamin) 2. In at the end (David Downes) / The young one (Nicola Walter) /
Teenagery and after (Colin MacInnes) / Dead end (Paul Goodman) / Anarchism
and the public schools (Charles Radcliffe) / Student Pages: Anarchism, an
introduction (John Whitfield) / Anarchism and non-violence (John Whitfield) /
Thoughts on the English monarchy (Andrew King) / Affluent Britain, a 6th
form view (Roger Lewis) / Further observations on technology and anarchism
(Harry Baecker)
Anarchy 28 – June 1963 – The anarchist past 1. (Nicolas Walter) / The
anarchist past 2. (George Molnar) / The future of anarchism 1. (Philip
Holgate) / The future of anarchism 2. (Ted Kavanagh) / The future of
anarchism 3. (Colin Ward) / The relevance of syndicalism (Geoffrey
Ostergaard) / Theatre Workshop’s war requiem (Alan Lovell) / Swimming and
drowning (Harold Drasdo).
Anarchy 29 – July 1963 – The Spies for Peace Story: 1. What Official Secret?
2. In the Beginning… 3. The Ripples Spread 4. Informing the Public 5.
More Secrete…More Demonstrations 6. Fallout 7. Whodunit? 8. The State
Hits Back 9. Onto the Banned-Waggon! 10. RSGs, Parliament and the State 11.
Conclusions
Anarchy 30 – August 1963 – The Community Workshop (John Ellerby) / The Idea
of an Experimenting Workshop (Juan Perez) / Towards a Do-It-Yourself Economy
(Bosco Nedelcovic) / The Teen Canteen: End or Beginning? (Gerry Williams) /
The Gypsies (Charles Radcliffe)
Anarchy No. 31 missing
Anarchy 32 – October 1963 – Anarchism and crime (Ian Stuart) / Tragedy in Dedham (Ward Jackson) / Anarchism and social control (John Ellerby) / His own man (Jim Burns) / In the bottom stream (Robert Ferguson)
Anarchy 33 – November 1963 – The Anarchism of Alex Comfort (John Ellerby) / Sex, Kicks and Comfort (Charles Radcliffe) / Alex Comfort’s Art and Scope (Harold Drasdo) /
A Disappointed Revolutionary (Sid Parker).
Anarchy 34 – December 1963 – Science fiction and anarchism (John Pilgrim) /
England in the wild (Arthur Uloth) / Burrowing for bureaucracy (Jeremy
John) / What it really feels like (Tom Pickard) /Kenneth Patchen: Laureate
of the doomed youth of the third world war (Charles Radcliffe & Diana
Shelley) / Reflected in a puddle (Catherine Gibson).
Anarchy 35 – January 1964 – House and home (C.W.) / Are council houses
necessary? (Peter Neville) / Of course they are (Caleb Williams) / The
multiple family housing unit (Teddy Gold) / In the urban jungle (J.E. &
A.B.) / Self-help housing in South America: The Barriada: a case history
(William Mangin) / A revolutionary fable (Gene Sharp).
Anarchy 36 – February 1964 – The laughter of Inspector Rowley (Ian
Sainsbury) / Close prisoners all (Tony Parker) / I’ve dislodged a bit of
brick (Donald Rooum) / No cause for police alarm (A. J. Baker)
Anarchy 37 – March 1964 – Why I Won’t Vote (Ted Kavanagh, Charles Radcliffe,
Jack Stevenson, Tony Gibson, Rita Milton, Jack Robinson, Pete Turner,
Philip Holgate) / Vagrants, (Adrian Cunningham) / Squawks of a citizen / Lapse
of community (Paul Goodman) / Story of an eviction (J.D. Gilbert-Rolfe)
Anarchy 38 – April 1964 – Nottingham United (Philip Callow) / Robin Hood
Rides Again: A Rebel Scene (Ray Gosling) / Nottingham at Fourteen / Man and
Motor in Nottingham (Paul Ritter) / Pages from a Nottingham Notebook (Harold
Drasdo) / Poor People (Alan Sillitoe).
Anarchy 39 – May 1964 – Discovering Homer Lane (John Ellerby) / The legacy of
Homer Lane (David Wills) / Recollecting Homer Lane (A. S. Neill) / The Little
Commonwealth in time (Anthony Weaver) /The Homer Lane Society (Roy Frye) /
Not quite the right idea (Leila Berg) /Chessman’s bequest to his
executioners (Richard Drinnon).
Anarchy 40 – July 1964 – Approaches to the land (Tom Jones) /Anarchism and
Agriculture (Alan Albon) / Why I work on the land (Tim Meadows) /Fields,
factories and workshops tomorrow (John Ellerby) / Direct action and the
urban environment (Robert Swann)
Anarchy No. 41 missing
Anarchy 42 – August 1964 – Indian anarchism (Geoffrey Ostergaard) / On
government (Vinoba Bhave) / The saints in session (Gaston Gerard) / Attitudes
to India (Tristram Shandy) /India, China, peace (Jayaprakash Narayam) /
Buddhist anarchism, Gary Snyder
Hi Library Friends.
We’ll be having another cataloguing and re-shelving session on Thursday 7th March, from 8.45* in the evening. There’ll be someone there to show you how the cataloguing works, and by the end of the evening we’ll have more stuff in a place where people can find it and make use of it.
On 21st the Feminist Reading Group will be talking about The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin, so we’ll take a break from organising books and actually look at the contents just for once.
Plans for April and May are still in the works, get in touch if you’ve any suggestions. There’s a likelihood we’ll be showing some Reel News dvd footage at some point soon.
*We’re starting late on 7th March to allow folks to also attend the Commonweal Library event:
Seeing those photos of charred and incinerated journals at Freedom Press was a bit shocking. We’d already scanned one of our back issues of “Anarchy”, the 1960’s periodical (monthly for most of its run) when we had an enquiry from an academic researching Landauer (or was it Buber?) and, it turned out, our grim Northern library was one of the places that had Anarchy No. 54.
Scanning journals is time consuming and you don’t immediately see any results (i.e. the people benefitting tend not to visit the premises). But seeing those burned editions of Freedom was quite an eye opener. It’s not the paper, it’s the words on the paper. And Bradford is a place where buildings burn down mysteriously all the time. It works out pretty well for the slumlords who can get the missing piece for their development plan on easy terms from obdurate independent types suddenly finding themselves in charge of a smouldering ruin, or exchange a high-maintenance low-income historic mill for a zero-maintenance pay & display car park with the toss of a match. Allegedly.
So, as part of our cataloguing frenzy we’ve scanned the first 10 editions of Anarchy, from 1961, and most of them are online now (there are a few upload issues outstanding) – they’re in searchable PDF format and you can also just download the text.
If you’re local to Bradford you could help us by coming in sometime to help us catalogue, scan, or sweep up (these are all necessary tasks of equal value and glamour). Check the 1in12 website for dates, or leave a comment below. Further afield, you can (a) let people know about our efforts, on your blog or whatever passes for conversation nowadays, or just send a big cheque to The 1in12 Library, 21-23 Albion Street, Bradford BD1 2LY.
Although, in the immediate, if you’re sending money anywhere it should probably be to Freedom Press.
Meanwhile, if you have a new-ish scanner you don’t need, we’d love to have it. Currently we have to use an old (slow) computer to scan as the scanners we have won’t talk to the newer computers. It takes ages. Get in touch.
Finally (1), if you’re one of those people who enjoys filling in grant funding applications we’re pretty sure this is the kind of project that has “give me your money” written all over it. And we do owe the 1in12 Club about 15 years in peppercorn rent and utility contributions. So get in touch if you know the magic words that can crack open the wallets of babylon for us, and if you can look at those forms without getting a migraine.
Finally (2), If you enjoy building work we’ve got a serious ceiling insulation project booked so we don’t have to suffer another expensive and chilly winter in the library. This isn’t going to happen imminently as we’ve no money for materials. But we have plans (including a groovy Library Disco) so, eventually, there may be some kind of bring-yer-tools weekender. Watch this space.
The journals are here: Anarchy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, – note we don’t have a copy of no. 2, but we do have some doubles of other issues. Get in touch if you can help.
Some people using the Library. And some boxes of literature awaiting cataloging.
We’re having a bit of a cataloguing session on 7th February, so if you’re interested in helping us get more books sorted and catalogued so folks can find them, that would a great occasion for you.
Someone will be on site from 10.00 a.m. onwards, until 10.00 p.m. and there’ll be snacks and drinks available.
If cataloguing books sounds a bit dull and you just want to have a look around, that’s fine too. Often visitors ask if they can take books away, and (relatedly) how to join the library. It should be a simple question with an easy answer – and there are some signs we made once (see below) which got lost in a redecoration drama – but it does depend on the shallow pool of volunteers not being totally over-committed and becoming only semi-available. So the longer answer is, yes, joining and borrowing can happen, but only if a few more people get involved in running the resource.
Groovy Process Diagram
In our occasional series of “Lunch With A Purpose” we bring you, on 15th December, from noon, coffee, cake, lots of lovely food, and some actual Library-type activity befitting a social club built on the principles of good company and self-improvement. To wit:
Tech Tools For Activism – we’ll have new copies of this booklet containing information on the following:
…and we hope to have some discussion around the themes emerging from some of this topics.
We’ll have some other recent additions to the Libary’s collection to look at too, and possibly a short session on cataloguing and adding new borrowers to the system, if that’s on interest to anyone.
We’ll also be looking at some short films from Tactical Technology Collective, overlapping onto some of the same subject areas as the TTFA booklet.
Finally we’ll bring it back to basics with a look at how we organise ourselves, with a discussion around mailing lists and a look at how the collectives within the club organise their “web presence”, a review of the 1in12.com website, consideration of the implications for our history of having a fragmented approach to web solutions, and some questions arising from that: Does it make us weaker or stronger? For a social centre what are the benefits and what are the costs of an internet free-for all? How do I get a log-in? Who maintains all these things against a background of inevitable membership churn?
https://techtoolsforactivism.org/
https://techtoolsforactivism.org/projects/hacktionlab
http://www.1in12.com/library.html
As part of our commitment to other medias, and in support of the 1in12 Cafe Collective, on Saturday afternoon, 24th November 2012 we’ll be having some bike-themed films.
There will, of course, also be lots of tasty food available.
If you can’t make it to the cafe/library, you can just follow the links and watch these great shorts from the comfort of your own internet device.
Even the Girls! (8:09)
Ashira Siegel 2004
A short film created using bicycle parts.
Created by Stephen Meierding
The Bicycle Cap (7:40)
Documentary about a very special series of bicycle caps made by Spanish brand peSeta for the New Museum of New York City.
Directed by Zipi
Wood Smoke (2:55)
Footage shot on foot and bicycle around Woodstock
By Fredo Viola
Tour de Force (2.45)
Music Video for the single “Tour de Force”
by Town Bike
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfwe64vbQY8&feature=youtube_gdata_player)
Beauty and the Bike (7:59)
The online short from the project Beauty and the Bike. Why do girls stop cycling in car-centric countries, whilst their counter-parts in cycling-friendly countries use the bicycle as a teenage tool for independence and liberation? This project sets out to find out.
By the Beauty and the Bike Project
Rose Petals on the Path (17:17)
Short documentary film inspired by the book “Recycled Memories”, about cycling in Northern Ireland in the ’40s and ’50s, looking at how cycling helps to overcome weaknesses, if it influences perception on reality and simply proves the importance of sport in our lives.
by Jakub Swiderek
An article on the latest in a series of defiant actions by residents to save Kendal Rise Library. http://london.indymedia.org/articles/12242
And please keep up with the attempts to find a new home to the Womens Library which was housed at London Metropolitan University visit here http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thewomenslibrary/support-us/stwlpage.cfm
In no particular order and with all the pops and crackles the audio for the 21st April Conference is here. http://archive.org/details/BpcacConference2012
(Will tidy later!)
