The death of east London's most radical bookshop

https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/scarlett-letters-closure-left-wing-bookshop/

by mooreds • 10 months ago

201 152 10 months ago

the-londoner.co.uk

This read like an episode from Portlandia.

Reason0772• 10 months ago

It's basically the plot of Empire Records, the 1995 classic starring young Renée Zellweger and Liv Tyler. Except with a radical left bookstore instead of independent record store. And no happy ending.

ecshafer• 10 months ago

Empire Records was anti-corporate. The record store goal needed to stay independent, under Joe's management, and they did want to actually pay money. They didn't strike and just demand to become owners.

Ironically though, there is a line by the owner of Empire Records on how he would be a rich man if his hippy father hadn't turned his grand fathers toilet emporium into a record store. But considering the state of record stores right now in the world, he is probably right, and long term a toilet store was a better option.

horns4lyfe• 10 months ago

This is a great read. Just hilariously unserious people

aanet• 10 months ago

That was my first thought too

lysace• 10 months ago

I enjoyed reading the initial part of their currently most popular story:

https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/karl-marxs-labubus/

Karl Marx’s Labubus - The memeification of the communist grandee’s final resting place

rjbwork• 10 months ago

Performative radicalism that freaks out wider society instead of slow steady progress has led to the near complete irrelevance of the left in the west, especially the anglosphere. I mean, UK Labor is a centrist pro-capital party now. It's over.

worik2• 10 months ago

"Performative radicalism" is a problem left and right

Look at UKIP, blaming the cluster fuck of the Brittish economy on immigrants, who are weak, other and easy to blame for damage caused by making taxpayers pay for banker's misfortune and Brexit

I am in New Zealand and we have the same problems, on the left and the right.

mhh__5• 10 months ago

Given that UKIP don't really exist anymore as a major party may I gently contend that it may be slightly more complicated than you imagine

pessimizer• 10 months ago

Labour has been "Blairite" ("centrist pro-capital," or just say neoliberal) since the SDP sabotage and the endless, worthless reign of Kinnock. This happened at the same time the New Democrats were stomping the Rainbow Coalition into the ground to finalize the transformation of the US Democrats into the exact same thing.

UK Labour has been a "centrist, pro-capital party" for probably your entire life (or at least most of it.) The only reason Corbyn even ended up in front is that a bunch of centrists nominated him as a joke candidate, and they hadn't been paying attention when Ed Miliband had changed the voting rules and accidentally made Labour a democratic party. Of course the membership voted for Corbyn, everybody else was garbage.

Same reason why Trump won the Republican primary in the US - the Tea Party had forced the voting process to be democratic. Unlike the Democratic party, which doesn't even have a vaguely democratic process, culminating in them having absolutely no process in the last election. I still insist that if Sanders had run as a Republican in 2016, he would have been president.

mhh__5• 10 months ago

The last time Labour wasn't like this we had waiting lists to get a telephone!

FridayoLeary4• 10 months ago

and they hadn't been paying attention when Ed Miliband had changed the voting rules and accidentally made Labour a democratic party.

Great line.

I think it's fair to say that both conservatives and labour have simply been riding on Margaret Thatchers coattails for the last 3 decades. If any of them have come up with any great original ideas of their own i haven't noticed.

On the subject of democracy it has been very inconvenient recently for both parties. This is where kier starmer comes shining through. In every other area he's bumbling, indecisive and unambitious to name just a few of his traits. But when it comes to maintaining control of his party he's masterful (well, uncharacteristically competent anyway) . He took full advantage of his opposition years to purge the Corbynites from his party. He had the time, it's not like he was doing much opposition. He recently took advantage of a scandal to rid himself of his more leftist and popular deputy Angela Rayner and did a cabinet reshuffle, buying himself more time.

It's noteworthy that the only single occasion that he took any firm and decisive action was in suppressing the right wing riots and prosecuting all the instigators in a truly impressive display of efficiency from the law enforcement and judiciary.

I agree with your analysis of the Democrats. It's hard to manufacture consensus while ignoring your electorate. Especially when you have such an outspoken rival like trump. Starmers opposition is so pathetically bad that he looks ok by comparison.

watwut• 10 months ago

Sure fascism is getting some power, but not because of left radicalism.

It got powerful because millionaire CEO sponsored them, due to them loving the idea of techno feudalism. And by being enabled by those who said "ignore them they are just trolls". And by support from Russia.

wahnfrieden2• 10 months ago

If you say "loving the idea of network states" instead of "techno fuedalism" you'll get more upvotes

tbrownaw2• 10 months ago

Or maybe something unrelated happened (business becoming more capital-intensive perhaps?), and everyone except the most radical moved on to other things?

mc32• 10 months ago

Naive idealism mixed with immaturity leads to these things. Wishing for things to be so doesn’t make them so.

Someone somewhere has to work for things to happen.

To me it feels like when a parasite finds a weak host. Neither will survive long. The relationship can be symbiotic but that requires effort as well as conscientiousness on both sides. The place was not running at break even but they wanted more despite that. They wouldn’t even accept cuts in staffing… They bled it to death with idealism.

bruce511• 10 months ago

Business is hard. It's hard enough to "start a bookshop". And while I admire folk who have a bigger vision, the whole thing rests on the business being successful.

Given the right priorities, it can work. A business can be profitable, and also embody progressive principles. It can be both an income, and socially responsible.

But most businesses fail. 90% or so don't survive 5 years. That's before adding externalities.

So starting a business with goals orthogonal to successful business is twice as hard.

I was struck by the demand by employees to be a collective. Thats an unusual request. It suggests that, even hired, that was floated as a path. It suggests the owner wanted employees to be "part of the family". So suddenly getting decisions from on high was jarring for them.

Unionising is a strange response. (Even the union was surprised.) Frankly the writing was on the wall at that point. A more experienced business person would just have closed then and there.

Obviously the employees thought that they could have succeeded had they just got the stock for free. I suspect not. They wanted more pay, would have had no incoming monthly investment, and would be short at least 1 worker (enough was likely doing a lot of work.) Doesn't sound like a solid business plan to me.

So yes, idealism is fine, but it doesn't make the business work. And I agree, in this case it killed it. But frankly, starting a bookshop these days is a pretty doomed approach. A (good) coffee shop (with some books) may have had a chance.

regularization• 10 months ago

Not really. Don't know about what really happened here, but if a place is performative, and mostly unneeded and irrelevant, it tends to blow itself up, and then the problem clears itself away. Movements that stick around and achieve things have their vicissitudes as well, but they get through them.

analog31• 10 months ago

What I wonder is how this didn't also happen to the right.

FridayoLeary4• 10 months ago

Having a set of beliefs tethered to reality probably. Also as a general principle the right/centre don't believe the job of the government is to interfere in every aspect of peoples lives. This at least limits their ability to reproduce the empty gestures and moral lecturing of the left.

watashiideogram2• 10 months ago

What I wonder is how this didn't also happen to the right.

Well, the "right", or more aptly conservatives, actively resist change in culture and society. They conserve it (hence the name).

immibis7• 10 months ago

Because it's simply incorrect. "Performative radicalism" doesn't "freak everyone out" and destroy a movement.

pydry2• 10 months ago

A) It does, sometimes.

B) The far right has a lot of wealthy donors because it is safe for capital. In this case, I think money would have smoothed over most of the issues.

Vegenoid• 10 months ago

Didn't it? But then, the pendulum swung. It will continue swinging.

aprilthird2021• 10 months ago

It did. The War on Terror was so bad for the political actors who took part in it in the US (and by ripple effect in Europe), that they were trounced by Obama, who is still the highest approved US President in the 21st century.

Trump won, partly by saying the War on Terror was a disaster and the Republicans were disasters. He distanced himself from a right wing which had done the same thing, made itself irrelevant to the mainstream with performative patriotism while we actually lost lives and trillions of dollars in a quagmire people didn't want about 1-2 years into it.

Whoever brings the left back will have to distance themselves from the party in a similar way

easyThrowaway3• 10 months ago

The extremely effective general strike that happened in Italy of a few days ago didn't start from academia, but dock workers in Genoa. Grumpy, robust, very left-wing dock workers.

The biggest issue of most "performative", as you call it, left wing movements is the lack of direct experience with everyday politics. Real-world politics are extremely messy, often in direct conflict with our ideals. Stuff like, How far you can push your message, how far can you pull the strings of the people and the institutions around you.

Those workers have a very good understanding of working both with strong forces and delicate equilibriums (...equilibria?). Both in their everyday work and their contractual situation. Otherwise people die, for real. They knew exactly what they were doing to get their end goals.

I see the same approach in people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Interestingly enough, she has too a working class background in a field where power balance is paramount. On the other hand I can't think of a single well-known British Labour politician who shares the same.

umanwizard3• 10 months ago

AOC does not come from a working-class background. Her father was an architect and the family owned a house in Westchester.

rahimnathwani• 10 months ago

This reminds of this discussion about the closure of a 'cooperative' bookshop in New York:

https://x.com/narrenhut/status/1970884747833585690

jbm2• 10 months ago

This is a joke right? No one refers to people as "melanated POC", do they?

I actually got in spat with a coworker once at a previous company for politely and sincerely asking what one of these neologisms meant (latinx in that case).

umanwizard3• 10 months ago

Melanated just means dark-skinned, in case you’re indeed being sincere. And yes, there are people who talk like this.

amiga3863• 10 months ago

Perhaps they just "didn't feel like being customer-servicey" often enough:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8KoiQKPmXf/

fnord772• 10 months ago

These people have diverged from reality.

Joeboy• 10 months ago

People who enjoyed this may also enjoy the Blocked and Reported podcast's episode about Glasgow's Pink Peacock cafe, "the only queer Yiddish anarchist vegan pay-what-you-can café in the world". If I remember it right, it closed among similar drama, also specifically involving issues with the building's toilet.

I have to admit to finding these things hugely entertaining. But for balance I'll point out that Housmans has been open since 1945 and Freedom since 1886. It's not the inevitable fate of radical bookshops to implode like this.

amiga3863• 10 months ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/142etak/heartbroke...

The owners of the Pink Peacock Cafe faced an uphill battle against prejudice, discrimination, and hatred, making it nearly impossible for them to continue their noble mission of creating a safe space for everyone.

Top comment:

Your place was an absolute fucking disgrace. You displayed more hatred and bigotry than any of the folk you are accusing. You didn't fall because of 'the system', you failed because you are a pseudo-intellectual circle jerk with staff who are abusive. Fuck off and good riddance.

Also:

You failed because opening whenever you could be bothered while selling piss-poor coffee and average food in a cafe which often resembled a messy student's bedroom isn't going to bring the punters in.
And be honest here, you're closing because you can't afford to fix the disabled toilet. You'll all be fine though. You've got trust funds and wealthy parents who'll help fund your next doomed to fail venture but those poor wee sods that did rely upon you will be let down by nobody but you.

kmeisthax• 10 months ago

Radical left-wingers subdivide into two groups:

1. Those who intuitively understand power dynamics and endeavor towards a "don't kill, and don't be killed[0]" mentality, even if they understand that the radical change they want is generational

2. People who want to wear the boot

To be clear, every organization and movement has #2. Libertarian conservatives are chock full of Trump bootlickers, neoliberals were basically completely coopted by corporate bootlickers, Free Software activists have an unsavory habit of falling in with whatever RMS says, anarchists have to deal with people who want to break windows for fun, socialists have "tankies" that just want Soviet Russia to invade and oppress, etc.

The book "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" covers this tendency if you want to read more.

[0] There are a lot of Floweys out there.

no_time• 10 months ago

I don't understand how RMS ties into this otherwise well articulated comment.

tgv• 10 months ago

There's much more variety, but it depends on what you call radical. There are stances which are radical in the eyes of the general public which are not violent, nor revolutionary.

easyThrowaway3• 10 months ago

It's called "pragmatists versus theologians" (or fundamentalists, depending on the translation), and it was extremely common in any left wing movement in Europe from the '60s to the '90s.

Umberto Eco wrote a fair bit about it. it's not exclusive to left wing movements but historically has been very apparent in such groups[1].

In short, You got a group of people whose main objective is to improve the condition of their community and it's inclined to bend the purity of their message in order to achieve some realistic objective (to the point sometimes of fully betraying the original ideology altogether)

And then you got a group of people whose idea is that philosophy trascends their or anyone else life, and the point is the fight itself. As an italian song of the '70s cynically puts it (very loosely trasnlated) "The fight has to be endless, comrade, otherwise I won't be a general for the people anymore."

Truth is, you need both of them to make a movement capable of actually going somewhere, despite ironically having in itself the main cause of its own collapse.

[1]https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/1232

pj_mukh• 10 months ago

And don’t forget City Lights in San Francisco has been open since 1953! I wonder how they avoided drama like this.

jnsaff2• 10 months ago

According to their website[0] they will be taking on New York soon!

[0] https://pinkpeacock.gay/

tolerance3• 10 months ago

To Parker’s mind, for a project started with the aim of platforming sex workers [...] to have reached such a point was mortifying. How had things gotten so bad?

I’m intentionally omitting all the objectives that actually make sense for a book store to have, in order to highlight what apparently was the main one...

This was a remarkable story. I’m sensing a pattern. When people of certain ideologies band together under ostensibly noble causes (cue all the aims previously omitted above) they tend to implode rather quick. Often, the objectors feel as though it's the responsibility of the other side (usually the leadership) to afford them with some sort of power of their own.

Also I'm a bit let down it never disclosed how Blaise Agüera y Arcas wound up there. If a Google employee is introduced in the beginning of a story it must be explained as to why. But if I was watching my competitors face legal issues for supposed illicit processing of intellectual property, I’d definitely send my guys out to embattled book stores to get their stock for the cheap.

ZeWaka• 10 months ago

Also I'm a bit let down it never disclosed how Blaise Agüera y Arcas wound up there.

I'm assuming the article forgot to mention (or weren't certain) that they were the angel investor, given that it was heavily implied.

tolerance3• 10 months ago

Ah, missed that paragraph. Far more interesting than what I speculated.

Reason0772• 10 months ago

Yeah, the article sort-of implies that this might be the case while (presumably deliberately) not actually saying it. It's a well-written article.

basisword3• 10 months ago

> This was a remarkable story. I’m sensing a pattern. When people of certain ideologies band together under ostensibly noble causes

I think this is the issue - they didn't band together. They all shared the noble cause but one was employing the others. Wrong business structure if the aim is to 'band together' and all equalling share in the hurt of running the business.

rtpg3• 10 months ago

Often, the objectors feel as though it's the responsibility of the other side (usually the leadership) to afford them with some sort of power of their own.

reading this story, it sounds like leadership was also just bad. The toilet story is just odd!

Keen to thwart any further opportunistic toilet-users, Scarlett had a new policy. Staff were to personally escort anyone who asked to use the toilet to ensure they didn’t steal any stock or snoop around the staff area.

Like this just is weird, right?

A lot of these stories (and stories like what happened with DHH and basecamp a couple years back) seem to have an important crux: leadership who might be lacking certain management abilities. These fights end up getting framed as "about politics" but "management making me babysit people who go to the toilet" feels just like more basic of an issue.

To me a more competent manager would just say "toilet's not for customers" and be done with it.

harvey93• 10 months ago

I think if you serve dine in food you are legally required to have a customer toilet.

tolerance3• 10 months ago

Yes. The leadership was also just (as) bad.

But combine incompetent leadership with impetuous personnel and I’m sure some other lame issue would’ve been set to fester for the dissolution of this bookshop.

And I’m not one to try to inject politics into every issue but it’s a good place to start and it sure has a way of being evoked by the parties under question one way or another.

renewiltord2• 10 months ago

These frequently happen among these people. I'm reminded of the Current Affairs episode and my favorite since it was so irrelevant: Matt Yglesias getting lambasted because he dared suggest hiring cleaners for the Vox office.

selimthegrim• 10 months ago

What happened with Current Affairs?

renewiltord2• 10 months ago

Here's an article that you can use a seed around which to find out https://yasminnair.com/march-what-really-happened-at-current...

tbrownaw2• 10 months ago

Since opening, the Scarlett Letters hadn’t made a month-by-month profit, but had been kept afloat by savings and a monthly donation of £10,000 from an anonymous “angel investor”.

Sounds like it wasn't so much a business as a piece of performance art.

nativeit2• 10 months ago

That’s probably true of most book stores at this point.

alexey-salmin• 10 months ago

Not really, margins on coffee are extremely high and a library-like environment can attract paying customers if you play it right.

greenie_beans• 10 months ago

no. bookstores are low margin endeavor but they still manage to stay in business and have been growing: https://www.uschamber.com/co/good-company/launch-pad/modern-...

will be interesting to see what happens with this trend in the current economy

basisword3• 10 months ago

Non-profit's exist. And if we're judging whether or not something is a business based on how much profit it's making that would make Silicon Valley the global centre of performance art.

wahnfrieden2• 10 months ago

OP is more interested in hearing about organizations that take on ambitious investment without apparent return in the fight for unicorn status profits in the future, rather than a fight for something non-financial

clickety_clack• 10 months ago

There’s a difference between a non-profit, and not making a profit!

charcircuit• 10 months ago

Non profits still try to make as much profit as possible. There are just extra legal restrictions on how money can be spent or extracted from the business.

Daub• 10 months ago

I think that the non-profits you are referring to are likely not-for-profits.

more_corn• 10 months ago

Lot of drama for not much of a business.

jasonlotito• 10 months ago

So, a tech startup.

loeg• 10 months ago

At least startups are expected to have a 0.1% chance of major success! A bookshop's odds are 0%.

tptacek• 10 months ago

I understand the dynamics of book stores and see how you could carry something like this for a long time with a not-crazy amount of money but what weirds me out are the people involved in the project who get mad at the "angel investors".

stogot2• 10 months ago

Did you notice in the story that their anger started with invoking their own prejudices or victimhood, each and every time? Getting mad at an angel investor and trying to steal an entire bookstore seems normal for this group of people.

Aurornis• 10 months ago

A museum in my city closed because they were very unprofitable and couldn’t continue attracting more and more donations to handle their costs.

A lot of people were angry and upset that it was closing, but whenever you pressed someone about it they would admit they hadn’t visited in a decade or more. Of those who had, the experience wasn’t very good. The museum had become more interested in poor digital displays and other disappointing museum things that simply weren’t interesting to view.

It didn’t stop people from being mad that it was closed or even getting angry at donors that pulled their funding. Some people like the idea of something existing in their city even though they don’t want to pay for it with their own money.

mathattack2• 10 months ago

Also true of favorite restaurants and childhood haunts. Things change and interests move on.

SilverElfin• 10 months ago

Sounds like a microcosm of democracy

rtpg3• 10 months ago

The toilet story was in April, and it says "less than 6 months after the shop opened"...

kinda a weird headline for a store open less than a year in the end? Or am I misunderstanding something

gdbsjjdn3• 10 months ago

This is insane overhead if you want to try and run a "leftist" business. It sounds like Scarlett is a trust fund baby with more money than sense.

I've been running a retail business with similar inventory costs for a couple years. I have one employee and I pay them generously. I personally chip in about 20-30k annually to keep the whole thing afloat. It's definitely possible if you keep things small.

Edit to add: 10k in inventory just doesn't add up. In retail you need to turn over inventory multiple times annually to cover your fixed expenses like staff, rent, etc. if you only have 10k worth of inventory and you're burning >10k a month that means you're selling everything in the store every couple weeks. I don't think books move that quickly, although I could be corrected. Usually the retail standard is turning over inventory 4-5 times annually.

Gooblebrai2• 10 months ago

Seems like you are assuming they sold the books to cover their monthly burn. But seems it was kept afloat due to donations more than due to inventory sales

specproc• 10 months ago

I've actually been in there, didn't love it.

I'm very much on the left, from an economic perspective at least, and a bibliophile, but I found the selection underwhelming. There weren't that many shelves and I just don't read much gender stuff, which was very much the focus.

I did buy a few books, none of them particularly good. The vibe there was also a bit odd, now I reflect on it.

I can definitely recommend Bookmarks off Tottenham Court Road for this sort of stuff. Great range, friendly staff, some nice merch. Got my prized Jeremy Corbyn tea towel there.

grumple• 10 months ago

This played out much like many coffee shops that I’ve seen in my city and others [0]. Basically some leftist with a little money and little to no business acumen opens a low margin business and hires far-left employees. Those employees, dissatisfied with their low wages - they are, after all, baristas at coffee shops that are barely profitable, if at all - form a union. When the owner tells them they can’t pay more and offer benefits because they are literally losing money, the employees then take to social media, destroying what little customer base the business had. The business closes, and the employees are now unemployed, having destroyed their own livelihood and a place they actually liked working, because they had this absurd idea that their queer/trans owner that was scraping by was some maniacal oligarch that deserved to be crushed by the workers.

The real lesson is that if you’re opening a small coffee shop or bookshop or similar small business, you have to work full time and not hire people unless absolutely necessary. And if you do hire others, avoid the communists.

0. https://www.34st.com/article/2022/08/minas-world-lgbtq-coffe...

nativeit2• 10 months ago

If I’m a barista at an indie shop shitting on my small business employer for not giving me more money, then I’m sort of by definition not much of a communist. The handful of sincere communists I know would absolutely label those people (correctly) as ignorant dipshits larping as communists (or at the very least, deploying convenient tropes as cudgels for their own narrow self-interests). No one who’s serious in their communist ideals would seek validation from their capitalist employers in the first place, and anyone who does should take the opportunity for some self-reflection.

The best people I’ve known from all over the political spectrum shared a capacity to bring me into their corner, for a few select issues anyway. They could only get to the point in the conversation where my mind is changed because they were sincere, humble, informed, curious, empathetic, and open to having the discussions.

I feel like so much of contemporary public discourse is shaped by the worst, most transparently dishonest idiots in society. This perspective of mine is also probably bent by the fact that I left Facebook around 2012, and haven’t really spent much time on social media since. I logged onto Instagram not long ago, and it all feels really weird from a naive point of view.

pimlottc2• 10 months ago

It seems that this business was incorporated as a community interest company (CIC) [0]. The Wikipedia article for CIC [1] talks about more the concept of "asset lock":

The articles of a CIC must also provide that its assets cannot be used except for the benefit of the community. This is known as the asset lock.

It sounds like this is why the employees believed they had a right to the books. But it seems hard to say without knowing what the specific articles for this company.

Of course, I know little of UK law, perhaps someone who is more familiar can chime in?

0: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_interest_company

krisoft• 10 months ago

But it seems hard to say without knowing what the specific articles for this company.

The Articles of Association seems to be available under your first link. (From filling history / Incorporation / View PDF)

I assume the employees either wanted to form an other asset locked entity or that hoped 3.2 b applied in their case.

pimlottc2• 10 months ago

Ah, I missed that link, thanks!

basisword3• 10 months ago

This kind of thing would only work as a co-operative or non-profit passion project where everyone has equal standing. Either you all want to put equal effort into running the non-profitable enterprise or you want fair pay, rights etc. in which case it needs to be profitable - and that's pretty much impossible for something like this. And in fact the employees clearly recognised it needed to be a co-operative)

There are a lot of comments linking this to 'left politics' but in reality this community bookshop was setup and only functioned by taking advantage of the 'employees' wanting to contribute something good to society. They come out of this looking bad but in reality their good nature was taken advantage of because if you can only run a 'business' on zero hours contracts and no sick pay (keeping in mind workers rights in the UK are much higher than in the US where a lot of readers may be from) you're taking advantage of people who are either desperate or too idealistic (to their own detriment).

Take this paragraph for example:

>Trying to create a space like this in advanced capitalism is extremely difficult,” it read.

If the 'advanced capitalism' they're talking about is capitalism where workers have rights...good.

> “The management targeted by this dispute is not a faceless collective of executives in boardrooms. It is one person, who is multiply marginalised, a known member of the community and for the past year has been working for six or seven days a week for the fraction of the salary offered to the booksellers.”

Wonderful. That's what founders do. They work hard and suck it up hopefully for some sort of pay off later on. Struggling as a founder does not give you any right to take advantage of your employees.

austinjp• 10 months ago

While I very much appreciate the story, I wish it was written in a more straightforward style. The cross-paragraph callbacks from a Google employee to someone living in a basement... well, that's fine for fiction (although I'd still find it tiring) but for this I found it needlessly difficult to follow.

But maybe that's just me. I appreciate this is a stylistic complaint, so I doubt everyone will agree. Still, for a factual piece that I expected to read more like reportage, I found this article fiddly to process.

fnord772• 10 months ago

So in the beginning of the story, a google VP was mentioned, then no follow up.

Why was that person there?

nenenejej2• 10 months ago

Maybe there were some rare books missing from their training set.

ttctciyf• 10 months ago

Thought it was going to be about Freedom Bookshop in Angel Alley, Whitechapel, but thankfully that seems to be alive and well[0]!

Being "the oldest and largest specialist anarchist bookshop in Britain" without succumbing to internecine bickering and factionalisation is pretty darn radical, I would have thought.

0: https://freedompress.org.uk/about-freedom/

113• 10 months ago

I also thought this would be about Freedom, the title is really a bit misleading.

ruined• 10 months ago

ah, it wasn't a collective. of course it failed.

in seattle's pike market, left bank books has been a collective operation for over fifty years now. it doubles as an event space and community center. and it's not just a static group of old comrades, many young people are involved.

pelagicAustral• 10 months ago

I know this is a tangent, but I just want to share this oddity. I am 38 years old, and I have been trying to buy Neuromancer since 1999. I have been in Santiago, Rome, London, Miami, Madrid, Bogota, live, in situ looking for the book on mainstream bookshops and I have never found a copy to buy. I know Neuromancer by heart but I have never been able to buy a copy of it. 38 Years.

firefax• 10 months ago

You could check it out from a library and just not bring it back. They'll charge you the MSRP.

sandspar• 10 months ago

Check large chains like Indigo Books in Vancouver - Gibson lives there.

cm2012• 10 months ago

For what its worth, I just checked my local Barnes and Nobles in the suburbs of New York and they had it.

globular-toast• 10 months ago

This is a funny comment because just last week I bought a second-hand copy in Berwick-upon-Tweed. I haven't read it yet but it's been on my list forever and it's a mint copy with a nice yellow cover. It was published in the UK as part of the "SF Masterworks" series which is a trove of previously out of print stuff. If you come to London again you should find it in most large bookshops like Waterstones.

Gooblebrai2• 10 months ago

It's everywhere in any major bookshop in London like Waterstones and Foyles

And once the TV series is out, you'll see it even more

harvey93• 10 months ago

Did you try asking shop staff? You might have happened to be in when the shelf was dry but the stockroom had a copy. This isn't really an oddity.

TiredOfLife• 10 months ago

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=neuromancer

rdtsc• 10 months ago

This is just very said.

It just seems on the surface that none of the parties here thought ahead more than one step ahead.

They were simply too kind, too feminine, too British: “You are all extremely nice, assigned female at birth, in customer service, mostly British etc., and all of this sometimes doesn’t lend itself to ‘no,’” the WhatsApp message explained.

That's like throwing a molotov cocktail into a fireworks storage warehouse. What did they expect the response to that would be? It's just tremendous lack self-awareness at play here.

The shop is closing so we'll just ... occupy it? And then what, the owner will give them shares of ownership as a reward?

This randomly reminded me of Slavoj Žižek's when he said he would have liked to see "V for Vendeta -- The Sequel". This is probably what it would be -- the winners would be fighting over clogged toilets, starting campaigns on Instagram and occupying each other's offices and making deals with locksmiths to be there at 4am to break in to take back their space.

jl6• 10 months ago

Sounds like a textbook purity spiral.

There’s a failure-mode of liberal open mindedness, where your mind is so open your brain falls out.

Sophira• 10 months ago

This article makes it seem like the whole thing is over and nothing came of it, but The People's Letters have a X account that they're doing updates on[0], and the new location opens on October 1st (this Wednesday)[1].

I'm not entirely sure why the article didn't talk about this.

[0] https://x.com/PeoplesLetters

[1] https://x.com/PeoplesLetters/status/1971482419502198960

gpvos• 10 months ago

The article dates from 26 July, the tweet from 26 September.

southernplaces7• 10 months ago

"A newly launched account said they were in “open dispute” with their employer over the threats to fire staff and the failure to meet all its demands. “The workers are queer, trans, racialised, disabled, sex workers and students,” it argued. “Their identities have been used to advertise and fundraise for the bookshop as a radical space whilst their voices are not listened to.” As might be expected, there was an outraged response online. Responses on Instagram accused the bookshop of being a “marketing campaign” as well as “colonial”.

Eight days later, Scarlett fired back on the shop’s Instagram, claiming they had attempted to, or were in the process of meeting, almost all the union’s demands. “Trying to create a space like this in advanced capitalism is extremely difficult,” it read. “The management targeted by this dispute is not a faceless collective of executives in boardrooms. It is one person, who is multiply marginalised, a known member of the community and for the past year has been working for six or seven days a week for the fraction of the salary offered to the booksellers.”

And all the above is a good summary of why for all the deep nuttiness of MAGA-level conservatives, the deep left is just as fucking off the deep end.

The death of east London's most radical bookshop

Related Stories