BY JONATHAN SILBERMAN
LONDON - "It's important to defend a bookshop like this," said Pat Reynolds of the Irish in Britain Representation Group. "It provides an opening for working class people to get access to socialist and other political literature."

Reynolds was addressing 35 people who had gathered to protest an attack on the London Pathfinder bookshop two weeks earlier. Three right-wing thugs had used an empty paint can to smash the shop's plate glass window, aiming at a display of the book Before the Dawn, the autobiography of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. The attackers ran off before volunteers staffing the shop could apprehend them.

Earlier that day, 2,000 people had rallied in London to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Ireland, when British troops gunned down unarmed civilians peacefully demonstrating on the streets of Derry in Northern Ireland. The anniversary has attracted wide media attention here.

"Orders for the Bloody Sunday massacre came from Whitehall," Reynolds said. "British policy in Ireland has consistently combined propaganda and censorship," he added. "They fight to stop the truth coming out, as they did in the Gulf War." As he chronicled numerous examples, Reynolds blasted the closure of the Green Ink, a bookshop in London that for 10 years has specialized in promoting Irish political and cultural books. Green Ink has recently had its local authority funding withdrawn.

Also on the platform of the protest meeting was Carmel Bedford of the international anticensorship organization Article 19. That group has campaigned in defense of Salman Rushdie, an author whose book Satanic Verses remains the target of anti-free speech attacks. For eight years Rushdie has lived under a death threat by the Iranian authorities.

"Political leaders don't need ideas and have no ideas. Ideas come from the grass roots," Bedford said, emphasizing that it is ordinary people that need access to books. "They should be able to get them free from intimidation."

Tony Hunt, speaking for the Communist League, recounted that working people in the vicinity of the shop had condemned the attack. "We went door-to-door in the local area, as part of the Communist League's election campaign," he said. "Some people told us that they didn't agree with the books in the shop, but they strongly believed in the right to purchase books free from intimidation. Others said they liked the books on sale and told of their visits to the shop. Immigrant workers from Africa spoke of their experiences - under the legacy of British colonial rule - of the attack on freedom of speech in their countries of origin. Only one person expressed any sympathy with the perpetrators of the attack."

Local member of parliament Simon Hughes of the Liberal Democrats sent a message to the meeting, condemning the attack on the bookshop as "unacceptable." Other MPs to send messages to the meeting included Labour's Kate Hoey, MP for the adjoining constituency, Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn.

The Amer Rafiq defense campaign in Manchester, which is defending an Asian youth who was the victim of police brutality, sent solidarity greetings, as did the Troops Out Movement, which campaigns for the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland.

Two bookshops also sent messages of support: Index Bookcentre, in London, which has been the victim of legal action for stocking a journal, Searchlight, that exposes the activities of fascist and other rightist organizations; and Mushroom Bookshop, in Nottingham, which itself was the target of a physical attack by fascists. "Like you, we reopened as quickly as possible, and continued to stock the same kinds of books as before," wrote the Mushroom staff.

"No paint can, rock, or any other weapon will stop Pathfinder from publishing and selling the books working people and youth need," said Pathfinder business manager, Sara Lobman. "Our answer to the rightist thugs is that we're currently involved in one of the most ambitious publishing programs in Pathfinder's history."  
 
 
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