Jonathan Morrison

23 July 2006

On Wednesday 19th July the Just Books Collective held a public meeting in the Belfast Unemployed Centre to launch its new website.  This meeting took the format of an opening address, a demonstration of the website and finally a brief political discussion of why the website was being launched at this time and how it could develop. 

The opening address was made by Jason Brannigan of Solidarity and the Just Books Collective.  He pointed out that the launch was taking place on 19th July as it was 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Revolution. He then went on the give some of the history of the Just Books Collective.   This went back to the opening of the original bookshop in the Smithfield area in 1978 by the Belfast Anarchist Collective.  While this shop closed in 1994, the Just Books Collective continued.   Most of its activity since then has consisted of providing stalls at events such as grassroots gatherings and at Belfast’s annual May Day celebrations.  Jason said that these stalls had been quite successful in terms of sales, and that they believed that this could be developed further through the creation on an online catalogue. 

It is intended that the new Just Books website will carry titles on a range of topics such as Irish and international labour history, feminism, socialism, racism and the environment. However, the setting up of the website is only a start.  In the longer term the Just Books Collective envisages the creation of a labour and solidarity centre that would provide information and resources for workers in struggle. This would be housed in premises providing a multi-lingual resource library, a bookshop, meeting space, internet access and a coffee shop.  After Jason’s opening address there was demonstration of the new website.  This was quite impressive, being well designed and incorporating an online ordering facility. 

The demonstration was to be the end of the meeting.  However, it seemed incomplete as there had been no political explanation of why the website was being set up or why the Just Books Collective believed there was the basis for labour solidarity centre in Belfast.  I found this frustrating and was provoked to ask those very questions.  I also made the point that the success of left websites and particularly left bookshops was largely dependent on the level of class struggle going on in society.  Given that the struggle was at a low level in the North, it was difficult to see on what foundation their ambitious plans rested.  This drew a mixed response.  Some of the mostly anarchist audience agreed that the class struggle was the most important thing, and that the website was a recognition that the struggle at this stage was still largely at an ideological, the “battle of ideas”.  However, others were more hostile, claiming that I was pessimistic and was saying that nothing could be done.   This line of argument reflects the anarchist view that revolutionaries can be autonomous from the class struggle to some degree and can generate struggle through their own efforts.  It was summed up by one anarchist’s response to my arguments that at least they were “doing something”. 

Given our different approaches to the class struggle and the role of revolutionaries there was not doing to be a resolution to this debate.  This, along with the fact that Socialist Democracy was the only group on the left to send a representative to the launch, meant that the discussion soon fizzled out.

We don’t share the anarchist view of the role that websites and bookshops can play in the class struggle, and we have doubts about the prospects for the development of a solidarity centre in the immediate future. However, we do welcome the launch of the website as a contribution to the dissemination of socialist ideas, and are preparing a list of our own publications to be added to the catalogue.