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Inside: Albert Meltzer and the Fight for Working Class History Five Years Of

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Inside: Albert Meltzer and the Fight for Working Class History Five Years Of Number 76 50 pence or one dollar Oct. 2013 Five years of the Sparrows’ Nest KSL: Hello, comrades. What is the Sparrows’ Nest, Labour for years and this is unlikely to change in the and how did it get the name? near future, but again, we disgress...). SN: We describe the Sparrows’ Nest as a centre for Italy refers to the 40 year anniversary congress of anarchist culture and education. It’s a semi•detached the International of Anarchist Federations in Carrara. house in an area of Nottingham called St. Anns. We’ll Some of us in the AF had gone to this and were call it the Nest for the rest of the interview – this name impressed by the way the FAI (Federazione Anarchica seems to have stuck. The Nest’s main project is its Italiana) were so well received for their connection with archive and library. living and past working class culture and had several After we opened in 2008, the local press (Notting• venues in the city. Of course in Britain there had been ham Post) wrote the following which was surprisingly anarchist social centres for many years (including the accurate – since then we’ve had regular opening hours Sumac Centre in Nottingham) but we were inspired to every week. start something more specifically anarchist communist, A new centre for anarchist education and culture although the project has evolved since then and is has opened in Robin Hood Chase. politically broader to focus on material about social The Sparrows’ Nest is largely the work of local anarchism, of interest to anarchists, and by anarchists. Anarchist Federation members, and was inspired by Several of the founders of the Nest had their similar projects in Italy. personal collections of publications and archive The centre is named after local anarchist publica• material, including books, magazines, and various tion The Nottingham Sparrow, which itself is a organisational documents, plus material from local and bastardisation of The Nottingham Arrow. regional campaigns which we realised early on were a The library and archive hosts a large collection of valuable record of activism and politics. These formed material on anarchist theory, local struggles and the early stage of the Nest collection and we have either workers’ struggles, with books and pamphlets includ• added this to our general collection or kept personal ing the old news publication St Ann’s News. collections intact dependant on the wishes on the The centre aims to be generally open to callers donator. As well as books we have posters, stickers, soon, but in the meantime visitors are asked to contact CDs and video and various artifacts such as t•shirts, the library on 07913 720136, or email lighters and even (empty) beer bottles with an anarchist [email protected] and arrange to view by theme or relating to social struggles. appointment. Members of the public are also being asked to lend KSL: You’ve been going for five years now. What are or donate material. you most proud of and what’s been your greatest Two of our founders had been involved with challenge? producing the Nottingham Sparrow as a local AF SN: We’ve had many challenges, not least cataloguing paper and we had a spoof letters column “Letters to the what we had at the beginning, which was a lot, when Sparrows’ Nest” – note the apostrophe since there are more and more was coming in. Thankfully after start• multiple sparrows (real House Sparrows nest commun• ing the Nest we managed to attract further hands and ally too, but we disgress...). The paper has not been brains to work on the cataloguing and develop the published since the real Nest opened – it seemed like a collections. Over the 5 years we have been entrusted natural thing to make a thing of fiction, real. with such important collections as the Anarchist For the sake of completeness The Nottingham Federation archives, the personal archive of Ron M. (of Arrow is a local council publication that is posted the Solidarity Federation) and that of SolFed itself. around the city to tell us how great the council is and Nick H. of the Anarchist Federation has donated a huge seems especially to come around at election time, so is number of books and other important anarchist the kind of thing Eric Pickles would dearly like to communist material from the 1960s and 70s. We have suppress (our unitary council has been controlled by had many other small and large donations from individuals, and taken some material from the Sumac Inside: Albert Meltzer and the Fight for Working Class History The Sparrows’ Nest Centre as well. We are grateful to the people who organised way to share skills and where appropriate to have thought of us and suggested us to others. In part exchange material between libraries would be useful. thanks to cross•over with the Peoples’ Histreh radical As a key recommendation we’d say put a lot of history group which we are also involved with, we effort into cataloguing; build a detailed database and fostered a really good relationship with an archivist at keyword everything to make it accessible. The Centre Nottinghamshire Archives who helped us with preser• International de Recherches sur l’Anarchisme (CIRA) vation (who told us we’d passed the first rule of in Switzerland has created a widely used database archiving which is to keep the stuff the in first place!) format which we’d have used from the start if we’d We have since spent a lot of money and time getting known about it. Also decide what you want to collect, hold of the right kind of archive boxes and on staple tell people what you are doing and promote it with removal. outreach activities. Ask for stuff as people don’t We have been pleased to have hosted talks by a necessarily know what they have is worth keeping! great number of enthusiasts and experts (many self• We run a mailing list as well as the website where we taught) and covering such topics as local housing, write about our progress and we hope this all helps poaching and the anti•poll tax campaign. The latter boost enthusiasm; it helps us too, to assess how we coincided with donations of two banners from the are doing. period and for which we scanned in bulletins and leaflets and press cuttings from the period (all on our KSL: How can people help you out, and how can they website) and showed unique video footage. We have get in touch to use the library? also hosted talks about specialist areas such as the SN: Our website has http://thesparrowsnest.org.uk Third Revolution. We have also hosted international contains contact details; email address and phone anarchist speakers from Belarus, Russia and Slovenia number are above; just email to get on our mailing list as part of UK/European speaking tours or one•off and to visit the Nest just phone first. We’ll happily visits. accept donations of texts, documents and other We think we have carried out a pretty good artefacts and we’d be pleased to curate and look after cataloguing effort over the 5 years, and most recently further donations, either adding it to or keeping it started our Digital Library project which is a system• distinct from our general collection. One recent collec• atic approach to getting some of the more one•off and tion we scanned in and gave back so this is also possi• unique material scanned in and available online. ble. We use a ‘40 year rule’ for material that could Students and researchers have used material in the identify individuals which we apply to the digital archive and in turn contributed to the digital library by library project; our full donations policy is on the leaving us the scans of documents they were studying. website. Preservation does cost money; acid•and We have also attempted to interpret the material lignin•free boxes are really expensive! We have a few ourselves – Ron’s archive in particular contains a regular donations from organisations and individuals treasure trove of correspondence (including carbon and we could definitely use more – see our ‘Spare a copies of letters sent from England) where we can find twig’ appeal on the website (Donations area) which the Syndicalist Workers Federation asking about the includes bank details and a form to fill in. We are effect on libertarians of the Cuban Revolution (sadly happy to discuss in advance any donation of material without reply) and find glimpses of day•to•day or funds. Thanks for this opportunity to tell your concerns of its members, with a good deal of wry readers about the Nest; KSL publications and newslet• humour. We have presented this material at various ters are part of our collection too! anarchist bookfairs which we hope some of your readers will have seen and found as interesting as we Library Notes, October 2013 found it to be. At the London Anarchist Bookfair this No reviews yet of One Hundred Years of Workers’ year we will present more material from our archive Solidarity : the History of “Solidaridad Obrera” – boxes. also available on our website – but it has been pointed out to us that Soli is the paper of the CNT in Catalo• KSL: What recommendations would you make to nia, not the ‘voice of the CNT’.CNT is the paper of people starting similar projects? the CNT across Spain. SN: We are aware of other library projects in Britain, We’re glad to see that AK Press have just some new and some that pre•date the Nest – early on published Anarchism and Workers’ Self•Management we linked in to the Network of Radical Libraries and in Revolutionary Spain by Frank Mintz.
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