219 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
219 lines
11 KiB
Plaintext
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Anarchist Summer School, Glasgow, Scotland.
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by Ian Heavens and Jack Campin
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The Glasgow anarchist summer school was held on May 29th to May 31st,
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in the Govanhill Neighbourhood Centre, Daisy St., Govanhill, Glasgow.
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It was organized by Glasgow Class War, Counter Information (an Edinburgh
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group who produce a freesheet), the Free University Network, Libertarian
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Social Committee and individual anarchists and libertarian socialists.
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There was a turnout of two hundred to two hundred and fifty anarchists from
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all over Britain and elsewhere, including an Italian autonomist. Bookstalls
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from A K Press (Edinburgh), Northern Herald Books (Bradford) and various
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local groups were on display.
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Some of the workshops are reviewed here. Others included:
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Popular Culture (including Mass Media),
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Philosophy of the Individual
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John Perroti and Prisoners' Support
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Women, Feminism and Revolution
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Workers, Class Struggle and the Unions
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Anarchist/Anti-Parliamentary History
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Scotland and National Liberation
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Sex and the Working Class
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Ireland and State Preparation
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Crime and Working Class Community
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Public Sector Pay Disputes,
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Community Resistance (including Water Privatisation/Poll Tax)
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Workplace organization
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Fighting the Law (including Asbestos)
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Successful Grafitti/Posters/Propaganda
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Italy: State, Corruption, new radical forces.
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Anarchist films and videos were shown throughout the weekend:
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- Despite TV, The Battle of Trafalgar; what really happened during the
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Trafalgar Square Poll Tax riot.
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- The Jewish Anarchists; documents the Jewish immigrant anarchist movement
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in the U.S.A. and the 87 year history of the anarchist newspaper "Die Frei
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Arbeiter Stimmer".
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- Survival Research Laboratories - Maimed Artist; S.R.L. are San Francisco
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based performance artists who build machines that fight with each other.
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- The Wobblies; documentary charting the history of the Industrial Workers
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Of The World, including interviews with many I.W.W. activists.
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- Behold The Pale Horse; Gregory Peck as a character very closely based
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on Sabate, the Spanish anarchist guerilla.
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Impressions from Jack:
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I was at the summer school on Saturday and Sunday, and went to four
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workshops: fascism, anarchism & marxism, the New World Order, and computer
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networking.
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Fascism: about 20 people. It hit me straight off that was a rather male
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gathering (so was the whole weekend). No very strong disagreements: the
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points people made included these:
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- organized fascism is not a big deal in the UK and not going
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anywhere fast.
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- one particular example of this is in Scotland where Protestant
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Loyalism resists incorporation into British fascism despite having
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substantial common aims (the British fascist parties being happy
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to work with Catholic fascists from Europe who are poison to the
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Loyalists). In practice this doesn't make a great deal of difference
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to us: the ruling class uses both in the same way.
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- this is not like the situation in Germany where the state has
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chosen to use the fascists as a disavowable force.
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- anti-fascism in the UK, as practiced by the front organizations of
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Marxist parties, is mainly about recruiting members and disregards
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the real needs of the black working class. They make a huge fuss
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when one of their paper-sellers gets attacked but ignore the problem
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of racist violence that isn't fascist-organized - either from the
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police or from clueless elements of the white working class.
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- what it takes to respond to this is real community organization, an
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unattractive option for a vanguardist as it means staying put in a
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local community at the cost of upward mobility in some national
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power structure.
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- some specific problems with vanguard anti-fascist groups: Anti-
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Fascist Action in Glasgow has now split into two factions, an
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anarchist one and one controlled by Red Action (a small Trotskyist
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party who are trying to use AFA across Britain as a power base).
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Searchlight (a well-established magazine now associated with AFA)
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has long been used by MI5 and the police as a two-way channel of
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information, thanks to its opportunistic anything-goes-in-fighting-
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fascism stance, and (this emerged at the plenary on Sunday) seems
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lately to have been used in attempt to smear Class War (see their
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April 93 issue; there's a pamphlet about this that I haven't read
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yet). Searchlight also has a very limited concept of what
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fascism is; you won't find them pointing to fascism in the
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Israeli state. Basically their line is that the destruction of
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fascism should be the concern of the repressive apparatus of the
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state and the working class should have nothing to with it but
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look on.
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- Black bourgeois nationalist groups take the same line, e.g. the
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Black Lawyers group in London that organized a disastrous march
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through a heavily fascist-infiltrated area and got their supporters
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hammered. Again this seems to have been a recruiting measure; to
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persuade the black working class that the only protection they can
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expect is from the black nationalists. White Trotskyist anti-
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fascists are doing their level best to prove them right by doing no
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organization whatever among the white working class.
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Marxism & anarchism: I went to this one by mistake because I couldn't find
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the room for the one about John Perotti and prisoner support. Wish I'd
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looked harder. It started with a long and self-indulgent talk by Albert
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Meltzer and continued with a mindless slugfest between a Trot who fancied
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himself as sympathetic to anarchism (but...), a guy from Class War who
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mistakenly tried to say something constructive and intelligent, and Robert
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Lynn (the elderly Glasgow anarchist whose idea this summer school was) in
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full tub-thumping sermon mode. Do we really need any more meetings about
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Kronstadt or whether Bakunin predicted the Soviet system?
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The New World Order: I found this rather insubstantial. The facilitator
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tried something that might have potential for other meetings - collectively
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constructing one of the conceptual network diagrams as described in Tony
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Buzan's "Use Your Head" - but I don't think it worked here as the ideas
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didn't emerge fast enough. This does raise an interesting point: if he
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didn't get that idea from Buzan (where I read it) he probably got it from
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some management book. Maybe there are other useful ideas there we could
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pick up on? After all, the ruling elite is quite capable of exploiting
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non-authoritarian organizational techniques *among themselves* if they
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further the control they exert *as a class*. Maybe some of us ought to
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take a stiff dose of anti-emetic and try reading some management
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literature...
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The social on Saturday night: OK but not exactly orgiastic. I spent the
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evening talking to someone I hadn't met for years, and quiet socializing
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was what most people were doing. This isn't what Glasgow is supposed to be
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like!!!
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General organization: bloody good. I wasn't involved in setting this up
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and the people who were must have worked their arses off. Absolutely
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*nothing* went wrong that I noticed. The venue (a community centre) made
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for some difficulties; we had to be out of the building in the early
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evening, which disrupted the flow.
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Ian's impressions:
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Completely agreed with Jack on the excellent organization, a credit
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to the Glasgow comrades. The main hall was hung with a large
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GLASGOW ANARCHIST SUMMER SCHOOL logo in red and black, and the names of
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well known anarchists were plastered over the walls. It was stimulating
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to see so many anarchists together, and the continuity of the anarchist
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tradition: Robert Lynn, a prime mover in the summer school was 69, and
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Charlie Baird is the son of the Charlie Baird who was a secretary of the
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Glasgow Anarchist group after the Second World War. I also met an anarcho
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syndicalist from Hull and an Oxford anarchist, both of whom were there with
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their parents; really encouraging, I hope we all go out and breed lots of
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tiny anarchists...the youngest attendee was my son Daniel, aged 13 months.
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I attended the workshops on Latin American Anarchism and the Basque
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Struggle. Both were run by anarchists who had spent some time in the
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respective countries; Jake Lagnado, who spent last year in Peru and
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Argentina, and a guy called Buzz from Glasgow, who had spent time in the
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Basque country and Catalonia. Their experiences and insights were very
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interesting, though I felt the discussions did not get as far as they
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could have done.
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Jake had some anarchist publications in Spanish and talked about the
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movements emerging in Argentina and Uruguay after the collapse of
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military government. Buzz described the relationship of the CNT and
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CGT to the Basque struggle; interestingly, the CNT's failure to take
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a positive attitude to Basque independence has lost them influence.
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He found some elements of the Basque independent movement to be
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quite positive from an anarchist point of view. I have an article
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from Jake on Peruvian anarchism which should be available through
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Spunk Press.
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Spunk Press
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The summer school was good for Spunk Press. A hundred leaflets asking
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for material were given out, and both publishers present agreed to
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make their catalogues available to us; A K Press have a really impressive
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catalogue, over 100 pages, and it will be excellent to get this online.
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Material is also being received from 'Here and Now', a Glasgow/Leeds
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based alternative magazine, and Working Press, a London radical publishing
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outfit. Individual articles from the Glasgow group (including its
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'History of Scottish Anarchism') and others should follow.
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Those using PCs to write articles and catalogues are often a bit
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diffident about the fact, possibly as a result of the antitechnology
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bias among anarchists, and did not see the point of and electronic
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archive until explained to them; A K Press got enthusiastic when I
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told them that up to ten million people could access their catalogue
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if it was online - though how many would order their books is another
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question.
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Computer Networking Workshop
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The Computer Networking Workshop was organized by Jack, Ian and Chris
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Hutchinson from the Anarchist Communist Federation. There was nowhere
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near enough time to explain and demonstrate the potential of networking,
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so that the aims of the workshops should probably have been more limited.
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Also, setting up and tearing down the computer and modem in an unfamiliar
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situation, with a strict time constraint on telephone access - combined
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with the fact that none of us are hardware buffs - made the online
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demonstration an energy and time consuming operation. We are just overawed
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by the fact that we managed to get it working at all! There are a lot of
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lessons to be learnt from the way we ran the workshop; by demonstrating
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the sophistication of the technology, it is possible to alienate people
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rather than persuade them of its usefulness. However, there was a lot of
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interest and useful contacts made.
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