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this is a bristol indymedia story

Organised jointly by Bristol anarchist bookfair collective & Bristol Indymedia, an evening of speakers, images, film and discussion.

In 2013 Britain chairs the G8 group of powerful nations (plus the ECC), and hosts a summit of G8 leaders on 17 & 18 June in Northern Ireland. Other meetings focusing on specialities (finance, policing etc) take place throughout the year. The G8 are in effect the unelected leaders and managers of the world economy, wielding massive power, and deciding what they can get away with in terms of making the majority pay for the crisis of capitalism. But whenever or wherever they meet they face opposition, which is one reason their summits occur in out of the way places!

The G8 were last in Britain in 2005, well out of the way at the Gleneagles hotel near Stirling in Scotland. A significant movement developed in opposition to them, spread across a range of groups - liberals, reformists, NGO's and Jubilee debt campaigners called on the G8 to 'Make Poverty History'; lefty groups offered up their lefty alternatives; anti-capitalists & anarchists combined in the Dissent Network to 'Stop the G8'. Widespread protests caused disruption in and around Edinburgh & Glasgow, and closer to Gleneagles on the first day of the G8 conference there was some success in stopping delegates attending. All sides were however brought to a halt by the sick islam jihadist-motivated public transport bombings on 7 July in London that killed many innocent people. So whilst attention was brought to bear on the activities of the G8, and they were disrupted, their role continued much as before. Poverty was not made history, and 8 years on much of the populations of the industrialised nations now face real poverty too. See this Dissent 2005 review (written before undercover cops exposed).

Tonight we will look back at the work of the Bristol Dissent (anti-G8) Group in 2005; consider the role of the G8; and hear about what opposition is planned by the Stop G8 Network for 2013.

Monday 15th April from 7.45pm to 10.00pm
At The Cube Cinema, Dove Street South, Bristol BS2 8JD
Entry £3/4 but nobody turned away for lack of money.

More info:
http://www.bristolanarchistbookfair.org/2013-bookfair/other-events/
https://network23.org/stopg8/
Shut them down book - http://www.shutthemdown.org/  (downloads available)

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Date : Sunday 7th April 2013
Time: 2.00pm-4.30pm
Meet: Gardiner Haskins Car Park (near Old Market), New Thomas Street, BS2 0JP
Price: Donation

As a belated launch for three new pamphlets released by BRHG in 2012-13 (The Bristol Strike Wave of 1889-1890 Socialists, New Unionists and New Women – Part 1: Days of Hope, Part 2: Days of Doubt and The Origins and an Account of Black Friday – 23rd December 1892) authors Mike Richardson and Roger Ball will navigate us through one of the most intense periods of class struggle in Bristol in the late 19th Century.

In 1889, the emergence of 'new unionism' (Gas Workers, Dockers, Seamen) representing unskilled and semi-skilled labourers, women and men, was an expression of independent organisation for workers’ collective voice. And it was the first time that Bristol women workers were able to join a general union on an equal footing to men. The victorious strikes of 1889-90 led to a reaction by employers and the state in 1892-3, culminating in the use of military and police by the local state to break up a pre-Christmas lantern parade organised to collect money for strikers and their families. This event, which popularly became known as ‘Black Friday’, is an iconic moment in Bristol’s history exposing the relations of force between ‘owners’ and ‘workers’.

So join us to hear about the rebellious women of the Barton Hill Cotton Works, feisty Dockers, French revolutionaries and striking 'Sweet Girls'.

The walk is split into three parts:

2.00-3.00pm The Strike Wave of 1889-90 (Gardiner-Haskins - Barton Hill - Lawrence Hill - Old Market - Hydra Bookshop)
3.00-3.30pm Coffee, cake and discussion at the Hydra Bookshop (34 Old Market St, Bristol , BS2 0EZ)
3.30-4.30pm Black Friday 1892-3 (Old Market - Welsh Back - Castle park - Haymarket/Horsefair - Hydra Bookshop)

Note: The Gardiner Haskins Car Park is open until 4.30pm on Sunday. There are other alternatives for free parking in surrounding streets.

Whatever your ideological opposition to the British political system, not using the tools that everyone else is using is a bit like trying to organise a demonstration without using 'corporate' social media. Self defeating.

I'm not saying that mass anarchists and insurrectionary anarchists should start standing for parliament. I am saying that we should vote, encourage others to vote, and join a party. In that party, our ideas will also be talked about, tested, amended and adopted by others in a mass working class movement. This alone should be reason enough for any anarchist serious about making revolutionary change.

A Left Unity party is already being set up. In London. By middle class intellectuals, defeated unions, and 'Old Left' political groups. And the Labour Party. At some point a Bristol branch will appear. It will be immediately dominated by old men from the Old Left who will expect the young bucks to do street theatre and get arrested at demos while they write the rules, impose the order, and make the same strategic mistakes they have been making for the last 40 years.

It doesn't have to be this way. Occupy, anti-fascism, direct actions, demonstrations, uprisings, football tournaments, bookfairs, bookshops, social centres, squats – pound for pound, per capita, Bristol anarchists have shown they have nothing to learn from London, or the Old Left, when it comes to organising in the interests of the 99%.