Freedom, or an anarchist newspaper - opinions and discussion

Admittedly, I haven't read Freedom in a long time.

Not to mention a professional journalist/sub who would like to be paid .

It maybe connected to the fact that it says "ANARCHIST NEWS AND VIEWS" on the banner.

but yeah Freedom carries a bit of anarchist-centric stuff now because readers kept demanding it be so, but all the lead stories (unless it's something really positive from the movement, like the social centre meeting the other week) are outward-looking, mostly non-comment news items.

Edit: Alan, the politics have to go somewhere otherwise it's just another leftist rag, with the probable shift to the right that generally entails over time (eg. Reynolds news, Herald etc).

I don't want to sound sectarian - no honestly, I don't, but I've never seen an issue of Freedom I'd be willing to sell.

It falls between too many stools. PLus, because it is unaffiliated, I have no say whatsoever in its content, I have to rely on the goodwill of the editors.

If some kind of joint effort were planned, then it would need to be something new that brought with it no baggage from the past.

But, unfotunately we have suggested the feds co-operate more closely in the past and have been knocked back by Solfed. Likewise the disucssion on the AF Forum on the idea of merging the two would make instructive reading, I think. imho Solfed are convinced they can successfully go it alone. I think they are wrong. I suspect that the future dsoesn't lie with any of the feds, but that soemthing new will come along and supercede us all.

Is this like when people say 'I don't want to sound insulting but...'? Afaic outside the AF's popular history lessons most of its propaganda content is clumsy, repetitive and poorly researched, doesn't mean I'd go so far as to say I'd refuse to sell it. See that's not sectarian, but what you just said is.

no it's not sectarian, it may sound it, I'm sorry. It's just an honest statement. Just like your views about AF propaganda.

So you'd say refusing to sell an anarchist paper because

Is not a sectarian attitude?

No. I'm saying that I've never felt enough affinity with it to want to sell it. That's not really such a different attitude to others that have been expressed about our propaganda, is it?

I certainly don't think that just because something says it is anarchist it has any rights over me.

I don't think Freedom is focussed enough. I think that is because it is unaffiliated. And I don't like distributing things that I don't have some say in.

sorry, forgot to add, that doesn't mean I wouldn't put it on a bookstall I was doing. I would.

How to put ths politely... in order not to be sectarian you would have to demonstrate some desire to engage and help other groups sharing roughly similar politics with yourself yes?

Now regardless of lack of focus, Freedom is an anarchist class struggle paper investigating issues the AF doesn't cover, in a way it should, presumably, have a great deal of sympathy with.

In which case, it would seem, on the face of it, that pointless and unrequested attacks on how the paper is run, followed by a refusal to help based on it's lack of one-party affiliation to a specific group, issectarian behaviour, not simply an intellectual viewpoint on the work of your comrades.

I'll let the 'just because something says it is anarchist' bit go, that's just stupid.

The why say you wouldn't sell it??

I think it should sell papers

Hi

Absolutely. It should own shops as well. It should be self-financing and maintain a strict minimum of political principles grounded solely in working class freedom and prosperity.

Love

LR

what I meant was that I wouldn't stand on street corners selling it.

On this thread I've read all sorts of comments about AF stuff - usually about how crap it is, how boring, how irrelevant. Now I've made a comment about Freedom and I get called sectarian.

also in real life I'm pretty conciliatory. When I get near a keyboard all by manners, tact and decency seem to fly out of the window and an irritable, unpleasant bastard seems to take over. Sorry.

No probs then, had the impression you wouldn't sell it to people at all, as opposed to simply not hanging around on cold street corners shouting 'Geeet yur freeedom eeere'.

Reason I got a bit shirty is cos afaik I've never made, nor has anyone from the current writing/subbing lot at Freedom ever made any comment at all on AF's publications (apart from on this thread in fact, and that was entirely in retaliation), so seemed a bit harsh to be dragged into something which had nothing to do with us and than have a raft of harsh (and largely unfair) accusations made.

The problem with threads this long is that I forget who said what .....

FWIW i'd happily sell Class War, Resistance, Freedom and hand out wombles prop all at the same time, cos if one of them tickles the fancy, great - we'll work out the 2 percent later. I do actually read all of those regularly too, i'm not just guessing.

But i'm not a particularly bright person so its a fairly worthless comment

Even though I've not seen Freedom in yonks, that's never stopped me from throwing in my two-pennorth. So here goes...

What direction would the people involved with Freedom like to see the paper go in?

Would they like it to be something that has representation (or delegation) from all the federations at the editorial level?

Would they prefer it was a) an anarchist paper, or b) a newspaper that had an underlying anarchist editorial policy. I say this, because the first option would like as not sell mainly to the small number of anarchists that read it now, whereas the second would be aimed first and foremost at non-anarchists and has the possibility of a bigger circulation.

If it's the first option, I gather that is more or less what the paper is doing now. But if it's the second option, I suspect that the federations might have more of an incentive to involve themselves in a project which could potentially reach a large amount of new readers.

But to do the second option, you would need to be strategic about editorial policy - to ensure that it appeals to the optimum number of people without losing its editorial integrity, to ensure that people like Comag, the wholesalers, bookshops and newsagents would actually take the paper in the first place - because if you don't do that, it's back to street sales, which in the present political climate, will never amount to many readers.

And if you did that, you'd basically have to run it like a (and I hate myself for saying this) 'business' and ensure that it can cover its costs and that the printer, designer and at least an editor gets paid - because a project on that scale couldn't rely on goodwill forever.

Food for thought, huh?

My impression from saii's posts is that there's a section of the freedom readership that demands it report on what anarchists are doing, rather than reports on struggles and developments in society with an underlying anarchist slant. There seems to have been a concerted effort to break away from this over the past two years (which you may well have missed if you've not read it), but it's still there, presumably because when anarchist-centric things aren't covered they get vocal complaints.

I'd like to see this internal aspect to the paper go completely (I'm sure that's not a surprise), but consider this an official request from a reader to start outweighing the pressure from others. If enough freedom readers chime in the other way, then it might give the editorial collective a bit more leeway to make more of a shift towards it being entirely a newspaper and away from it's schizophrenic position that saii described earlier.

Wouldn't that just require that one person from each federation volunteered to help edit the paper? I don't think setting it up organisationally as accountable in some way to the feds would work unless there was a lot of real input going in from individuals - which is what's lacking at the moment. I think it's a false sense of accountability to the 'anarchist movement' that's the main obstacle to it becoming as good as it could be, and led in the past (not so long ago iirc) to such disgraces as the Green Anarchist column.

Wouldn't have any problem at all with it being run a bit more as a 'business' - if people are doing work on something that ties them in to quite a strict schedule then I'd rather they got at least nominal payment for it than were unpaid exploited volunteers. Paying someone, even a little bit, to work on proper distribution would be well worth it as well.

If it was covering costs reasonably well, then free handouts, maybe free subscriptions to libraries, that sort of thing could be organised as well.

I get the impression that this is what the current and recent editors would have loved to do, but have no chance of implementing due to resources. I've never really got involved in Freedom (have put a couple of articles in but no more than that), but to me, it's current format in terms of looks, without the current strapline and with more people contributing actual reports of struggles rather has the best chance of making it to any kind of decent distribution.

Thinking about it, I'm sure the current printing costs of the various freesheets, if applied to a very large freedom run, could produce nearly as many copies for free as well. And a smaller freesheet with comment/analysis/listings could always be done as an insert.

fwiw, here's the libcom.org/news content guidelines, which we implemented when we relaunched it in November and I think have stuck to pretty well:

I suspect you gather wrong. At the moment it is a newspaper with anarchist politics, which is very different from an 'anarchist paper' in the sense I think you mean, and as has been said repeatedly, it mainly covers issues relevant to people other than anarchists (last few splashes for example have focussed on pensions, education, NHS, major strikes). It might be an idea for you to read the thing before 'gathering' ffs, would you start issuing advice to a footballer you'd never seen play on how to improve their technique?

We have discussed giving the federations space before, which failed for a couple of reasons (1) reliability - it would require that all four (five including EF, plus who else?) sent stuff in regularly, which has not thus far been particulary doable (they struggle enough with their own stuff let alone ours), and as has been noted by knightrose, not having direct control over it really puts them off (same way as the TUC would like to run its own paper, though they at least have a mechanism for sending press releases on what their latest initiatives are, which probly needs to happen at some point, assuming growth). (2) There were worries that officially hitching parts of the paper would lead to situations where feds might threaten to withold stuff if they have a problem with how we cover stuff in the main body of the news (thus undermining the claim to be representative), or would lead to indignation from groups left out, or possibly lead to a situation where feds feel they have a 'right' to their spot even if they are supersceded etc. That can or course be re-evaluated depending on circumstance though.

I wonder serge have you got much experience in 'strategic' editorial policymaking? If so give me a PM. If not, what was the point of your post exactly - simply saying must try harder? We know all the stuff you've been saying and we're looking at it, but frankly, we don't need yet another well-meaning amateur throwing their opinions around without a care in the world for how to achieve any of it, we need people with skills who can help practically.

On the anarchist schizophrenia thing, yeah I agree it's not ideal at the moment, what I'd like to do (and may try and get implemented, if I can work out a pleasing way of fitting it into the paper without displacing other stuff) would be to fulfill that anarch-recording remit by having a specific community news section, in which the less embarrassing efforts of the movement could appear, along with rumours, splits etc, carefully separated from 'real' news. I do think that concrete reportage of what anarchists in particular are doing is important, if only to give the reportage on real issues a context of "look, this is what our comrades are doing about it" - ie. a positive reinforcement of the politics at point of sale.

I think that there are enough concrete examples of things which anarchs are involved in (militant anti-fascism, defending council housing, even if it only West Mids , education networks etc) to make the case for it. Mass efforts which are non anarchist tend to get promoted to the main news section anyway if they've done well, as victories don't really belong on a community news bit they belong on a podium for rarity value atm (tis easier in the international section admittedly).

Direct-linking to anarchs who are involved is important I feel to give people a sense that anarchists (outside the paper) aren't just a bunch of hippy middle class drop-outs - part of Freedom's purpose is to get people involved with anarchism and anarchists after all (well, some of em anyway).

I think you're being a little unfair here, John.

People become involved in the federation which most closely reflects their own ideas and it's understandable that they put most of their efforts into the work and propaganda of their own respective federations. But I do not believe there are a few 'not-very-good' publications. I think they are all, by degrees, good in their own way in terms of doing what their members want them to do. So for the federations to be more interested in a paper like Freedom, it would have to offer something more than what their own publications have to offer, be a direct benefit to those organisations in exchange for whatever time and energy they might contribute, and would be perceived as a project that would make a difference in getting revolutionary ideas across to a broader public.

Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way being critical of Freedom - I'm sure the people involved work bloody hard on it. But like I say, I haven't seen it in a long time. I'll even take out a sub when I get some cash.

A couple of things. First off, could someone split this thread as it deserves one of its own.

Secondly, I think there are criticisms to be made of Freedom at the moment, but most would probably get ironed out with more people involved. When I recently posted up some of the things from Black Flag in the 90s onto Libcom I was struck by how hostile we were to Freedom. I think we were right then, and the efforts of the last 3 editorial teams to steer things away from the "old" Freedom are worthy of support.

In 1996,

Now those resources are available to the anarchist movement, it is actually up to us to use them!

Personally, I think anyone involved in any of the Feds or local groups should be engaging with what's in the paper. Take out a sub or get a bundle. Raise some money for it. Write for it. If you have ideas about things and can or want to write on libcom you can also do it for Freedom. If you're not confident - ask for help. People here will give it.

Regards,

Martin

PS I think Freedom should cover some of the things that anarchists do, because no one else will

Er... I never said the paper's rubbish.

My involvement in the discussion about Freedom came about because of suggestions of the possibilty of a general mass produced publication. Someone then said, that Freedom is aiming to do exactly that. So instead of contributing ideas about a paper that doesn't exist, I made much the same points for one that does exist - Freedom.

So there's no need to get all offended.