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The death of east London's most radical bookshop

the-londoner.co.uk

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Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#31

Post by pimlottc »

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

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#32

Post by tbrownaw »

rjbwork wrote: post #6

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.

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

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#33

Post by krisoft »

pimlottc wrote: post #31

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…

> 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.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#34

Post by Reason077 »

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote: post #2

This read like an episode from Portlandia.

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.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#35

Post by nativeit »

grumple wrote: post #29

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 a…

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.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#36

Post by FridayoLeary »

pessimizer wrote: post #15
rjbwork wrote: post #6

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.

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 mos…

>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.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#37

Post by Reason077 »

ZeWaka wrote: post #16
tolerance wrote: post #12

> 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 un…

> 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.

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.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#38

Post by jbm »

School-Cotton wrote: post #28
jbm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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

I can guess what it means, but it sounds like a pastiche and an exaggeration from far right activists that are trying to portray leftists as being out of touch.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#39

Post by mc32 »

rjbwork wrote: post #6

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.

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.

Re: The death of east London's most radical bookshop

#40

Post by basisword »

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.

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