February 22, 2022
From Anarchy in the Sticks!/Dorset Radical Bookfair
Last time it was Boris De Pfeffle Johnson who pulled the plug on our activities. This year we’ve been shut down by the latest of her majesty’s policing agencies – Tom Browns Pub in Dorchester!
We’ve been in talks with this venue for months and had reached an agreement, to the extent of working out where everything was going to be, drawing a floor plan and making arrangements for hire of tables and other equipment. The Fourth Dorset Radical Bookfair was set for the 11th June 2022 and we began promoting the event online. Bands were booked for the afterparty. We had just started sending invitations to our supporters when the venue inexplicably went back on its word and cancelled our booking.
After a little probing we were told that some regulars who identify as “left feminists” objected to content at previous events they considered “extremist”. We seem to have fallen foul of one of Dorset’s dinosaurs; this is the Jurassic Coast after all. There is a highly reactionary tendency in West Dorset that has fallen far behind not only the radical left but mainstream society, history has left them stranded, like fish up a tree. We are aware of a “feminist group” that meets in Tom Brown’s which narrows it down a bit.
Keep in mind we haven’t done one since 2019. On that occasion most of the talks and discussions were environmentally themed – check it out here: – we’re rather proud of it. So perhaps it was our trans-inclusive policy or the sex-worker poetry they didn’t like. Was this the person who kept taking the gender neutral signs off the bog doors? They were lucky not to end up in outpatients having one removed. Everyone else had a great time, the Corn Exchange staff were most encouraging and would have had us back had they not altered their facilities.
We don’t engage in identity politics. Identity is only political when someone else makes a detriment of it, then it’s old-fashioned Class struggle. We will not be censored. We will continue to welcome anyone who can extend the same courtesy to others, if you can’t, don’t come, but don’t get in our way.
Venue and other suggestions to dorsetbookfair@riseup.net as always.
The D.R.B. Collective X
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