London AF public meeting

Just wonder what the ICC and their fellow travellers feel about been lumped together with "25-plus anarchists". Times would have had a conspiratorial field day if they'd ID'd them!

This, basically. That or we just pick someone at random from the meeting to blame and hold an anarcho-show trial

teh anarchists r now friendz wit teh communists! oh noes!

International Communist Current would have looked great in print as a shadowy organisation.

i mean honestly, it is ridiculous how journalists turn up at open public meetings and then pretend it was a secret meeting that they rumbled

I think it's the Daily Mail that have it in for the ICC, or the 'sinister French Communists' as I believe they describe them.

Any idea who the journo was? I spoke to a good deal of the people afterwards, and alot of the attendees participated aswell.

Has anybody actaully been able to read the article?

I know this doesnt help at all but the article was signed by Fiona Hamilton and David Sanderson. If they both attended the meeting I have singled it down a couple in their late twenties. They were the only attendees who I didnt know, that is, apart from the student activists who spoke and who naturally introduced themselves. Not read the article yet as you have to pay for it!

Web search ‘Home of The Green Arrow’ or ‘isupporttheresistance.blogspot.com’
further down the web page under the picture of Nick Griffin there’s a ‘search this site’ box type ‘Fiona Hamilton and the BNP’.
There’s an article about a Times jorno with a slightly obscured snap of someone they’re ranting about, it maybe her?

Yes I remember a woman and man turned up late, sat at the back and didn't say a word throughout the meeting. They also didn't have dreadlocks and didn't smell of high grade so i'm sure they weren't anarchists

The Greek couple, if I remember correctly, were sitting behind the two bald headed men dressed in black, I know because we spoke - the mystery couple, who arrived late, were right at the back.

There was talk at the meeting about having another forum like this soonish and keeping it open to people, if the next forum is organised wouldn't it be a good idea to directly contact and invite groups that have done good anti-cuts work so far but are not necessarily anarchist groups (obviously not to many because of the size of freedom). I'm mainly thinking about student anti-cuts groups who haven't got a particular political line or UKUncut? (maybe other suggestions)

I just think it's important that we reach out to people rather than waiting for them to come to us.

UKUnCut definitely and then maybe trying to bring up a discussion of tactic--getting 'inside' the stores being 'uncut', linking up civil disobedience and workplace organisation, and moving the struggle toward generalised economic blockades and not simply targeting 'bad' capitalists.

inviting UKUncut would be a good idea
you might want stress AF's commitment to organising (i think some - not all - have an impression that anarchists are solely those who go on black blocs. at least this is the feeling i got from a meeting recently)

plus the media is working overtime to try and get UKUncut to condemn 'violence', and it seems a contentious issue within UKUncut, so it would be really good to link up with them before they form an anti-anarchist viewpoint

I think that conversation has already been started!

http://solfed.org.uk/?q=a-letter-to-uk-uncutters-from-the-violent-minority

And that UKUnCut woman on BBC didn't take the bait either.

Brighton UK Uncut published a fairly encouraging reply.

Arseholes. Public meetings always run the risk of this, ultimately there is nothing we can do to stop this. Has this type of thing happened before in public AF meetings in the past? (I know you have been around alot longer than most of us ) The press seem to be having a field day with anarchists recently- probably as they are not allowed to phone hack these days. Hopefully they will get bored and write about something else soon.

The Times paywall is currently down.

It was in any case astute of Battlescarred to ask professional journalists to leave. Of course some of them can be won over.

A very promising meeting, I would say. The level of discussion was very high, and there seemed to be a clear desire to open this initiative out more widely. Some interesting discussions in the pub afterwards as well. Raw confessed his secret identity to me - and I hadn't realised it was him prior to that. Not altogether antagonistic discussion about the Black Bloc, which I will come back to somewhere else. Also talked to Playinghob and Blackrainbow, partisans of class struggle forums.