Freedom Press

Freedom Press Spring update

With snowdrops and daffodils out in the woods and a vicious new Budget being announced, it appears Spring has arrived and with it, the latest offerings from Angel Alley. We’ve announcements on books old and new, a shout-out for contributions to our site and journal, plus of course a quick update on how we’re doing at the Press.

New books

Our first proper recent refresh of Colin Ward’s work, Talking to Architects focuses on his interaction, as an anarchist, with his longtime career in urban planning. While the lectures it’s based on spanned primarily the 1990s, its lessons are entirely timeless, and it’s brought bang up to date with a foreword by Paul Dobraszczyk, author of the 2021 book Anarchism and Architecture.

Later this year we hope to re-release a new, expanded edition of one of Ward’s most famous books, Anarchy in Action, to mark 50 years since its first publication.

COMING SOON

Our next book, meanwhile, is well on the way. The State – or Revolution is a collection of essays by Camillo Berneri, a lesser-known figure today than his daughter Marie-Louise, but highly influential in the 1920s and 1930s. A trenchant critic of autocrats in all their forms, he was exiled by Mussolini and eventually assassinated by the Stalinists in Barcelona.

We’ll be launching the book with a talk by its editor, Iain McKay, at Freedom Bookshop, 6pm May 20th, and keep an eye out for a pre-order page popping up at our online shop before then!

The newswire

Towards the end of last year our (now former) esteemed editor Zosia finally signed off and is moving to The Class Work Project, though never fear she is still lending her skills to the collective! She managed a very solid five years of the gauntlet that is the Freedom editorial chair – never an easy job at the best of times, particularly give the last half-decade of strife and conflict.

We are lucky to have found a fantastic replacement in Sylvia Mann, who has been putting out some great stories and is helming the creation of the next print issue of the paper, due out in time for May 1st!

In Angel Alley

Having coped through the winter with only mostly alarming energy bills, we’re entering the warmer months with a long list of things to fix and rising business rates to boot.

Our last fundraiser was in the mid 2010s, which saw generous souls donate towards fixing the roof, repointing and generally getting the place waterproof, as well as sorting out our electrics and lighting.

What we put off at the time was a lot of the less immediately vital works, including the big one of fixing up the windows, a lot of internal stuff like plastering, flooring, insulation and decoration etc. Some of this is ongoing fixes we’re finding funds/volunteers for ourselves, however the bigger works are going to need a little boost, and we’ll be outlining a fundraising campaign in the next while.

In the meantime any donations are always welcome to kick the process off, and can be sent via cheque (to “Freedom Press” at 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E17QX) or paypal.”

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