(a) putting a whole lot of cutlery away because your housemates are not doing the dishes often enough; or

(b) blocking coal trains to an export terminal; or

(c) brewing your own beer instead of complaining about the price of a pint at the pub; or

(d) planting a guerrilla garden; or

(e) “As a small Marxist propaganda party facing the difficult task of rebuilding in a period of protracted downturn in working class struggle, we need to return to Lenin’s conception of building the party around the paper. Direct Action is our primary outreach, campaigning, recruitment and educational tool.”

Fellow Workers,

You (the Revolutionary Socialist Party) have taken it upon yourselves to expropriate without consultation or compensation, the title of our (IWW) paper “Direct Action.”

This was the paper started by the IWW in world war one and brutally suppressed by the government then, restarted by the IWW in the late 1920’s and published by the IWW in several editions from 1990.

In this publication you call calling Direct Action the RSP make reference to the IWW in the past tense only and the lack of any reference whatsoever to direct action publications after 1990.

This is particularly dishonest because our Regional Secretary Mike Payne wrote to you before publication reminding you of our existence and the fact that we maintain ownership of the title “Direct Action”.

This ownership given us not by some legalistic copyright but by the persecution, imprisonment and deportation of the members of our organisation in Australia who worked for their class and and fought to build a paper to educate, organise and emancipate it.

So much for the SWP in the 1970&80s then DSP 1990s - & your RSP 2008+ much vaunted commitment to “solidarity”.

Basically you show yourselves as thieves prepared to steal any title not nailed down by some form of bourgeois copyright.

The IWW in Australia has a long history.
Some of our members have been irascible and belligerent.
We have had our ideas and we have fought for them and defended them against all comers.
But whenever solidarity was called, whenever a just cause or an under-dog was struggling for we have been there.

In recent years we have remained a small group and one lacking in resources but this should not mean that basic principles of fair play and solidarity should be trampled underfoot in this way.

We wish you would take up another name for your paper - PLEASE!

Viola Wilkins
Melbouirne IWW
PO Box 145,
Moreland
VIC 3058
http://www.iww.org.au

PS
I suggest everyone write expressing their outrage at this thievery to:

Editor: Doug Lorimer
editorial@directaction.org.au

Assistant editor: Allen Myers

Design/layout: Dani Barley, Kathy Newnam
layout@directaction.org.au

Website manager: Jorge Jorquera
webmanager@directaction.org.au

Subscriptions manager: Marce Cameron
subs@directaction.org.au

and let them know what you think of them.

Direct action is:

(a) putting a whole lot of cutlery away because your housemates are not doing the dishes often enough; or

(b) blocking coal trains to an export terminal; or

(c) brewing your own beer instead of complaining about the price of a pint at the pub; or

(d) planting a guerrilla garden; or

(e) “As a small Marxist propaganda party facing the difficult task of rebuilding in a period of protracted downturn in working class struggle, we need to return to Lenin’s conception of building the party around the paper. Direct Action is our primary outreach, campaigning, recruitment and educational tool.”

this is in response to the RSP split from DSP calling their paper “Direct Action” !
As well as dropping using the IWW paper title they could perhaps rename themselves the Revolutionary Socialist League (RSL) or the
Revolutionary Socialist Venezuela Party (RSVP) which may prove popular with the masses maaaate!

PDD was hardly a single issue or in any way deceptive “front”, it was a network of anarchist groups (CW, LSO, Kropotkins, Treason etc) and individual anarcho activists. It met regularly and was a good base for activism - free speech in the mall, Boggo Rd. conditions & rights anti-nuke, responding to police attacks on activists etc. on various issues. It wound down as people became more commited to specific ventures - Women’s House, Catholic Worker house of hospitality & Justice Products, Kropotkins Restaraunt, “Trash of All Nations”, 4ZZZ work etc

PDD is mentioned in one of Ross Fitzgerald’s histories of Queensland and was an effective way of various anarchists tendencies to organise in Brsbane - avoiding sectarianism, emphasising mutual basis for action and opportnities for reflection and debate.

Brisbane would certainly have been a less interesting place without Brian Laver. The old adage that once the new left collpased in Australia - Melbourne went Maoist, Sydeny went Trotskyist and Brisbane went anarchist has a certain truth to it. A lot of anarchists in Brisbane were initially introduced to the possibility of that position by the charisma and oratary of Brian Laver.

It has been interesting to observe over the years that the most angry detractors of Brian are those who were once his most uncritical acolytes having abandoned critical distance in the first stages of the romance. It recalls the last scene in the film Collins -when he (played by Liam Neesen - who comes from the same north of Ireland town as the young student -Rosemary Severen? - who was batoned in ‘77 bringing Whitrod down and Lewis to power, I digress!) is set up for assasination by the young former acolyte full of personal, not just political, resentment. Thankfully in Brian’s case it has only been sustained character assassination over the decades.

During the right to march times (when I turned up on the scene) the Red and Black was quite detatched from the broader movement and organisationally existed only as a cell in the People for Direct Democraccy (PDD) which was the anarchist front for much of that time.

Brian also played a significant role in PDD beyond Griffith even though he may have been largely invisible to the “authoritarian marxist leninists”. Even when overseas he was one of very few people that funded anarchist campaigns.

Also, when Brian pulled the legal structure from under the R&B bookshop to set up Emmas he was obviously villified by the collective who resented this. However, it must be said that it was not Brian’s fault that the collective did not own the business. They could have at any stage started a new company that was democratically controlled. But they didn’t because of, in my opinion, a combination of laziness and unwillingness to accept responsibility. it was easier to just keep things as they were. I refer to the post-Mertek and Helen etc. period with this comment, nobody could accuse them of not taking responsibility.

Also, and I am not a primary source here but have heard the story from both sides of the fence, it was not just right wingers who attacked the R&B. It came under sustained harrasment from the Black power movement including Denis Walker and Pastor Don Brady after an anarchist leaflet accusing Walker and others of black fascism was distributed.

Thanks for the corrections of my typo of Emma Goldman’s name and the finer points of the history of anarchist bookshops in Brisbane.

Brian Laver’s account does corroborate yours on how he bought out Peg Pemberthy (formerly CPA) to set up Emma’s in Vulture Street, West End.

On my recollection at the time of the street marches in Brisbane (1977-1979), the Red and Black Bookshop was run by a collective which included Helen Schwenke, Murtek (his name then), Harley Robert John West, Jessica Mountwinter and some others I do not recall. Note the absence in this list of Brian Laver who was teaching at Griffith University in 1978 and whose involvement in the street marches was confined mainly to that campus. Also I think Brian was OS for some of those years so played no real role in the Red & Black then. From memory, Murtek was arrested in the bookshop by Special Branch in 1978 and sought the aid of Noel Nunan (now a magistrate) from Students Legal Aid. Murtek (aka Frank) had written a book critiquing the bible from an anarchist perspective.

For those that are interested, on your next visit to West End you can see the Emma’s sign remains on the awning over where the bookshop was near the corner of Vulture and Boundary.

Also if you wish to improve your own reading library then you may wish to visit the bargain book sale this weekend 26-27 July 2008 at Zapata’s next door to Ahimsa House, 26 Horan St, West End. For further details phone 38465077.

Ian Curr

The colonial state should be shaking in its boots after this.

While it is true that the legal structure of the Red and Black became Emma’s, the history of the bookshop does not go that way. In it’s latter years it operated from a small shop in Browning St. West End which closed because the legal structure was pulled out from under them. The collective didn’t own the business. My memory gets a bit hazy here as I wasn’t a part of it but I think it spent a small time at Justice products and then moved to become the Annares bookshop in Baynes St. West End, which developed through different waves of anarchists drifting in and out into a community centre of different purposes from time to time. They had the corner shop next to the new Justice Products in Boundary St at one stage too.

It’s last manifestation in Baynes St. was as the Headquarters for “Angry People” which included a bookshop and an internet cafe. Angry people brought Lorenzo Irvin to Australia.

There has also been in recent years an anarchist bookshop in Montague Rd. Hill End.

Many anarchists have also run bookshops from time to time from the downstairs shop at ZZZ (where the peoples bookshop was)

Brian bought out Peg Pemberthy of the CPA to set up Emmas, She had a second hand bookshop in Vulture St. which provided the bulk of the old stock for Emmas when it started. The Red and Black had very little stock, most of which was returned to publishers and the rest claimed by the collective to set up Annares.