The death of east London's most radical bookshop
the-londoner.co.uk
the-londoner.co.uk
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
[0] - https://pinkpeacock.gay/
Sounds like it wasn't so much a business as a piece of performance art.
At least the ones I know of that have remained open are in a building owned by the owner (so they don't have to pay rent).
will be interesting to see what happens with this trend in the current economy
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.
It didn’t change with the times at all and the subcultures themselves went into decline or just aged-out of being club-goers. On closing night it was rammed with people who were sad to see it go, who wished it could stay there. The owner asked “where have you all been?”
Well, we’ve been ageing, hanging out in craft ale bars and doing that a lot less often. Our appetites for hanging out in a loud, semi-subterranean dive are satisfied by an annual or biannual visit to a place we thought fondly of and thought would always be there, but didn’t really want to be in when it came to it.
kinda a weird headline for a store open less than a year in the end? Or am I misunderstanding something
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.
It is rather objectionable to label people with your assumptions. Unless you have some inside information you are just making shit up based on your own judgemental bigotry.
People start "hobby" businesses for many reasons, and those reasons are not always status oriented. All too often I've seen idealistic people with the best intentions crash into reality (often financial reality, but often other causes as in the article).
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.
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.
I'm assuming the article forgot to mention (or weren't certain) that they were the angel investor, given that it was heavily implied.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Quite obvious what I mean
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.
It’s a great parable of badly-managed state-run monopoly vs badly-managed privatised monopoly.
I don’t think I blame BT for not wanting to invest in a market it was barred from making a profit in. This is the result of heavy handed local regulation strangling a national incumbent for the sake of foreign interests.
At any point other competitors could have made the same investment but didn’t want to either until relatively recently.
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.
Anyway what sunk corbyn wasn't his anti semitism, that was the excuse, but his socialism, which isn't at all what New Labour is about. Starmer is a centrist, which stems from his policy of having no position on anything. He is rightfully mistrustful of the left wing of his party. They would have lost in the elections.
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.
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.
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.
Well, the "right", or more aptly conservatives, actively resist change in culture and society. They conserve it (hence the name).
Just like it's not communism to advocate for better welfare, labor rights, affordable housing and so on.
And european mainstream right is no longer right for the last few decades on those topics. Today’s „far“ right sound like what mainstream right would say 10-20-30 years ago depending on exact country.
You said it yourself - even the right used to tolerate illegal immigration. But you were okay voting the center right at that time. And now you're voting the far right who are putting them in concentration camps. So you're far right, but you didn't used to be.
Here „far“ right offer is to deport illegals and curb new migration.
Also, we have detention centers since forever. What do you propose to do with illegal migrants waiting deportations instead? Put them in prisons? That's a wee to harsh, isn't it?
Of course, then people can start talking BS about muh concentration camps with allusions to soviet and nazi camps. But those camps had some specific features that ain't present in detention centers.
The first sentence of the Wikipedia article on conservatism is exactly what I mean:
> Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values.
By promoting the incumbent ideas, there's no chance that they "freak(s) out wider society" as the OP said. The ideology is simply to resist change, which will almost always be less controversial than advocating for change.
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.
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
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.
Both her and the dock workers were pretty effective in their causes because they have experienced first-hand how going for an half-assed or whimsical approach even in everyday politics bites you hard.
[1]Also wikipedia says that her mother was a house cleaner and school bus driver?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And once the TV series is out, you'll see it even more
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.
There’s a failure-mode of liberal open mindedness, where your mind is so open your brain falls out.
I'm not entirely sure why the article didn't talk about this.
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...
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.
> 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...
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.
Why was that person there?
https://www.the-londoner.co.uk/karl-marxs-labubus/
Karl Marx’s Labubus - The memeification of the communist grandee’s final resting place
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.