Jura Books | Keen for Revolution? @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/system/system.base.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/system/system.menus.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/system/system.messages.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/system/system.theme.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/aggregator/aggregator.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/sites/all/modules/calendar/css/calendar_multiday.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/comment/comment.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/sites/all/modules/date/date_api/date.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/sites/all/modules/date/date_popup/themes/datepicker.1.7.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/sites/all/modules/date/date_repeat_field/date_repeat_field.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/field/theme/field.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/node/node.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/search/search.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/user/user.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/modules/forum/forum.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/sites/all/modules/views/css/views.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/sites/all/modules/ctools/ctools/css/ctools.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/sites/all/modules/taxonomy_access/taxonomy_access.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/sites/all/themes/bealestreet/style.css?oa3l5d"); @import url("http://web.archive.org./web/20170926221744cs_/http://jura.org.au/sites/all/themes/bealestreet/css/red.css?oa3l5d"); #page { width: 95%; } .topBlock, .bottomBlock, .middleWrapper, #loginWrapper { width : 95%; } #sidebar-left, .region-sidebar-first { width : 210px; } #sidebar-right, .region-sidebar-second { width : 210px; } body { font-family : Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; } Skip to main content Welcome Visitor: Login/Register Search Search About Bookshop Library Blog Images Audio Events Contact Donate Links Upcoming events Creative Rebellion 28/10/2017 - 3:00pm to 10:00pm more Jura blog Society under Surveillance Jura Books: Forty Years and Now Russian Revolution book reviews The Egyptians: A Radical Story - the book that Noam Chomsky couldn't stop reading The Case for Anarchism or why Hierarchy should be Abolished More New books New AK Press titles this week. 1 week 3 days ago PM Press new titles at Jura this week. 2 weeks 3 days ago New titles from a new publisher: OR Books 3 weeks 3 days ago Intersting New Titles at Jura Books 1 month 2 weeks ago A couple of new titles 2 months 2 weeks ago New AK Press books this week 2 months 3 weeks ago Latest books at Jura from AK Press 4 months 2 weeks ago New books from PM Press, one of our favourite anarchist publishers... 5 months 15 hours ago New titles 5 months 2 weeks ago New titles this week - come on in to Jura... 5 months 3 weeks ago more Creative Rebellion Saturday, October 28, 2017 - 3:00pm to 10:00pmJoin us and participate in a festival of creativity on Sat 28 October.

As part of Jura's 40th anniversary celebrations we would like to host a celebration of creative rebellion on Saturday 28 October. We’re calling for proposals from musicians (acoustic), poets, actors, comedians, jugglers, video-makers, artists, DIYers, vegan cupcake bakers, and anyone else with creative talents, to be part of this participatory celebration.

The act of creating or performing something for our own pleasure and the enjoyment of our community can be a profound act of rebellion against the consumerism and commodification prevalent in contemporary society. We know that Jura’s community of supporters is full of talented people. We are seeking people to fill a 10 or 20 minute slot with something creative that can be shared with others. Why not join us on 28th October and share your creative spirit with like-minded people?

The festival is planned to run from the afternoon into the evening, with a presentation by Melbourne poet TTO as the anchor event in the evening. The purpose of inviting proposals is for programming. Apart from TTO, the program will depend on proposals received.

To get involved please email your proposal to jura@jura.org.au with these details:

Your name & contact and names of any co-collaborators Type of creative activity (eg music, poetry, talk, video, workshop, etc) Time required – generally a 10 minute or 20 minute slot, but we're flexible Any preferences you have for a timeslot between 1pm and 6pm Any special equipment / set-up you need, and if you can provide it yourself Any other details that may be relevant To help us work out the program, it would be greatly appreciated if you could email us your proposal by Saturday 30th September.

Facebook event.

(Image is a poster out of Jura's archive – 2SER Tokyo Hit Beat, artist unknown, possibly Redback Graphix.)

» Read more about Creative Rebellion Society under Surveillance Submitted by Stuart on Sun, 24/09/2017 - 5:53pm I sent a letter about the following incident to the editor of Sydney Morning Herald. Of course they didn't publish it.

At 9pm on Thursday 22 June at Bankstown station I was taken off the train to Liverpool by police. They searched my bag and me. Reason? They said a guard saw someone of my description put something down the front of my pants. They took away my backpack and an officer put it on a seat on the platform and looked inside. Meanwhile they took me up in the lift into a room on the station concourse. About six of them surrounded me, ready to jump on and subdue me at the first sign of resistance. They asked whether I was wearing underwear, before making me undo my pants so that they could have a bit of a look. (What the guard had probably seen on the train's surveillance camera was me putting something, my wallet or handkerchief perhaps, in my pocket, at the front of my pants.) They did a cursory rather than thorough search, suggesting that they didn't expect to actually find something, such as an illicit drug, weapon or explosive, but rather were carrying out routine harassment and humiliation. They were responding to a report rather than acting on their own initiative. It was a quiet night. Not many people around. They were probably bored. In my hand I had a copy of The Match! - an anarchist journal from the US, that I'd been reading on the train. That issue happened to contain a letter to the editor from me critical of NSW Police! I put it on the table so that I could undo my pants as they ordered. "What are you reading?" one cop asked. "A magazine," I replied, stating the bleeding obvious. They didn't look at it or pursue the line of questioning. "Where did you catch the train?" "Erskineville." "What were you doing there?" "I was browsing bookshops in Newtown." I answered their questions to begin with so as not to appear suspicious, as if I had something to hide. But after a while I refused to answer any more. Why should I submit to the harassment? I'd done nothing wrong and didn't have to explain myself to them. They seemed to respect my right not to cooperate further. One cop made a comment to the effect that they can't be too careful these days, with all the things that are going on. What was he alluding to there, I wonder? Was I a terror suspect, a potential suicide bomber? There was another remark, that I was 'unusual.' Unusual? Because I was someone of anglo appearance, in the ethnically diverse Bankstown area? Because they don't usually 'profile' (harass) people like me? When I've seen them harassing someone it's generally a young non-white person. At the end I was asked whether there was anything I wanted to say to the police. Well yes, there were a few things, but I wasn't going to say them! All I wanted was to get away from them and resume my journey home. Another passenger on the platform, who must have seen what happened, asked whether I was going to take the matter further. I thought of the last time I lodged a complaint against police, of the officer smiling to himself as he wrote down details of long-lasting pain inflicted gratuitously on me during an arrest at a protest against John Howard in Darwin. Of course nothing came of the complaint. I ended up taking some action of my own, naming and shaming publicly the officer concerned. I was publicly harassed and humiliated for nothing. What kind of totalitarian police state do we live in? Am I supposed to feel grateful I wasn't bashed or shot dead? Police get paid generous salaries from taxpayers' dollars to waste their own time and other people's. Funnily enough, before boarding the train I'd noticed the sign at Erskineville station saying, 'If you see something, say something.' There's a photo of someone talking to police. To the guard who dobbed me in, I'd like to say, "Congratulations! You have made an impressive contribution to the government's Fear, Suspicion and Paranoia campaign." The government wants us all to feel threatened by shadowy (Islamist) terrorist organisations. It's a case of deja vu. Up until 1990 it was the communist threat that we were told to fear, the Soviet Union and 'reds under the bed.' The fear of 'the other' is always promoted - those who are not like 'we good people' and who want to do us harm. Our good, strong government is supposed to be there to protect us and save us from evil. Though unfortunately we do have to sacrifice some of our liberties in return for the security provided. Whereas in reality the main threat to our freedom is the government itself, any government, and usually its business end, the police. (By the way, isn't it bizarre how they have that announcement on the trains advising that if you're feeling unwell, don't risk boarding the train? The announcement claims that there are medical staff at stations waiting to treat your illness. Is there anyone that actually believes this obvious lie? Many stations are not staffed at all most of the time.) This incident caused me to reflect. The fact is that these days we're all being subjected to unprecedented surveillance. Privacy is becoming an outmoded concept. Just think of the trains for example. The old trains have no cameras in them but the new ones have, I think, 8 cameras in each carriage. That makes 64 on one train. How does one guard monitor that many? S/he could not possibly see all that is going on, and how good would the resolution and detail of an image be? But that's probably not the point. Increasingly, in this modern version of the panopticon - a prison in which many cells are simultaneously visible from a central vantage point - someone could be watching us at any time. We don't know whether someone is seeing us at a particular time but we get used to acting at all times as if we are being watched. The all-seeing god of earlier times has been replaced by the ubiquitous surveillance cameras, in train stations, shopping precincts and other public areas. We don't know who is watching us, whether images are being recorded and stored, and if so, for how long. Who has access to all this footage? We don't know. Add to this the vast amount of data being gathered from electronic communications. Billions of people volunteer masses of personal information without knowing who has access to it and what it will be used for. George Orwell would be horrified to see the nightmarish dystopia in his novel '1984' becoming the accepted reality. How long before the surveillance cameras are in each room, including bedrooms and bathrooms, as we learn to welcome the benevolent gaze of Big Brother in every aspect of our lives? Who could possibly object? Only those with something to hide. All decent citizens naturally want to see the end of the scourges of pedophilia and violence against women. We know that information is power but too often we continue to surrender it without a fight to bosses like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg who seem to aspire to divine status. Yes, life is as always a struggle to survive, make ends meet and somehow preserve our sanity, but shouldn't we be trying to redress the power imbalance, or at least taking the time to stop and think where we're heading with this mass surveillance society, before it really is too late? Just because Big Brother wears a smile and has a soothing voice doesn't mean he's our friend. Ps. Do not put your bag on the seat. Doors closing. Please stand clear. Society Under Surveillance I sent a letter about the following incident to the editor of Sydney Morning Herald. Of course they didn't publish it. At 9pm on Thursday 22 June at Bankstown station I was taken off the train to Liverpool by police. They searched my bag and me. Reason? They said a guard saw someone of my description put something down the front of my pants. They took away my backpack and an officer put it on a seat on the platform and looked inside. Meanwhile they took me up in the lift into a room on the station concourse. About six of them surrounded me, ready to jump on and subdue me at the first sign of resistance. They asked whether I was wearing underwear, before making me undo my pants so that they could have a bit of a look. (What the guard had probably seen on the train's surveillance camera was me putting something, my wallet or handkerchief perhaps, in my pocket, at the front of my pants.) They did a cursory rather than thorough search, suggesting that they didn't expect to actually find something, such as an illicit drug, weapon or explosive, but rather were carrying out routine harassment and humiliation. They were responding to a report rather than acting on their own initiative. It was a quiet night. Not many people around. They were probably bored. In my hand I had a copy of The Match! - an anarchist journal from the US, that I'd been reading on the train. That issue happened to contain a letter to the editor from me critical of NSW Police! I put it on the table so that I could undo my pants as they ordered. "What are you reading?" one cop asked. "A magazine," I replied, stating the bleeding obvious. They didn't look at it or pursue the line of questioning. "Where did you catch the train?" "Erskineville." "What were you doing there?" "I was browsing bookshops in Newtown." I answered their questions to begin with so as not to appear suspicious, as if I had something to hide. But after a while I refused to answer any more. Why should I submit to the harassment? I'd done nothing wrong and didn't have to explain myself to them. They seemed to respect my right not to cooperate further. One cop made a comment to the effect that they can't be too careful these days, with all the things that are going on. What was he alluding to there, I wonder? Was I a terror suspect, a potential suicide bomber? There was another remark, that I was 'unusual.' Unusual? Because I was someone of anglo appearance, in the ethnically diverse Bankstown area? Because they don't usually 'profile' (harass) people like me? When I've seen them harassing someone it's generally a young non-white person. At the end I was asked whether there was anything I wanted to say to the police. Well yes, there were a few things, but I wasn't going to say them! All I wanted was to get away from them and resume my journey home. Another passenger on the platform, who must have seen what happened, asked whether I was going to take the matter further. I thought of the last time I lodged a complaint against police, of the officer smiling to himself as he wrote down details of long-lasting pain inflicted gratuitously on me during an arrest at a protest against John Howard in Darwin. Of course nothing came of the complaint. I ended up taking some action of my own, naming and shaming publicly the officer concerned. I was publicly harassed and humiliated for nothing. What kind of totalitarian police state do we live in? Am I supposed to feel grateful I wasn't bashed or shot dead? Police get paid generous salaries from taxpayers' dollars to waste their own time and other people's. Funnily enough, before boarding the train I'd noticed the sign at Erskineville station saying, 'If you see something, say something.' There's a photo of someone talking to police. To the guard who dobbed me in, I'd like to say, "Congratulations! You have made an impressive contribution to the government's Fear, Suspicion and Paranoia campaign." The government wants us all to feel threatened by shadowy (Islamist) terrorist organisations. It's a case of deja vu. Up until 1990 it was the communist threat that we were told to fear, the Soviet Union and 'reds under the bed.' The fear of 'the other' is always promoted - those who are not like 'we good people' and who want to do us harm. Our good, strong government is supposed to be there to protect us and save us from evil. Though unfortunately we do have to sacrifice some of our liberties in return for the security provided. Whereas in reality the main threat to our freedom is the government itself, any government, and usually its business end, the police. (By the way, isn't it bizarre how they have that announcement on the trains advising that if you're feeling unwell, don't risk boarding the train? The announcement claims that there are medical staff at stations waiting to treat your illness. Is there anyone that actually believes this obvious lie? Many stations are not staffed at all most of the time.) This incident caused me to reflect. The fact is that these days we're all being subjected to unprecedented surveillance. Privacy is becoming an outmoded concept. Just think of the trains for example. The old trains have no cameras in them but the new ones have, I think, 8 cameras in each carriage. That makes 64 on one train. How does one guard monitor that many? S/he could not possibly see all that is going on, and how good would the resolution and detail of an image be? But that's probably not the point. Increasingly, in this modern version of the panopticon - a prison in which many cells are simultaneously visible from a central vantage point - someone could be watching us at any time. We don't know whether someone is seeing us at a particular time but we get used to acting at all times as if we are being watched. The all-seeing god of earlier times has been replaced by the ubiquitous surveillance cameras, in train stations, shopping precincts and other public areas. We don't know who is watching us, whether images are being recorded and stored, and if so, for how long. Who has access to all this footage? We don't know. Add to this the vast amount of data being gathered from electronic communications. Billions of people volunteer masses of personal information without knowing who has access to it and what it will be used for. George Orwell would be horrified to see the nightmarish dystopia in his novel '1984' becoming the accepted reality. How long before the surveillance cameras are in each room, including bedrooms and bathrooms, as we learn to welcome the benevolent gaze of Big Brother in every aspect of our lives? Who could possibly object? Only those with something to hide. All decent citizens naturally want to see the end of the scourges of pedophilia and violence against women. We know that information is power but too often we continue to surrender it without a fight to bosses like Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg who seem to aspire to divine status. Yes, life is as always a struggle to survive, make ends meet and somehow preserve our sanity, but shouldn't we be trying to redress the power imbalance, or at least taking the time to stop and think where we're heading with this mass surveillance society, before it really is too late? Just because Big Brother wears a smile and has a soothing voice doesn't mean he's our friend. Ps. Do not put your bag on the seat. Doors closing. Please stand clear. » Read more about Society under Surveillance Stuart's blog Jura Books: Forty Years and Now Submitted by Guest contributor on Sun, 16/07/2017 - 10:26am Robert P. Barbagallo wrote this piece as part of an oral history project he worked on as a student at the University of Sydney. It is based on a series of interviews with Jura Collective members.

This piece will tell the story of the Jura Books anarchist collective as it was told to me through a series of five interviews I had conducted throughout May 2017. Five different members, both present and past, told me about their personal arrival to Jura, what they had experienced along the way, as well as their views on the Australian anarchist movement and their interpretation of anarchist ideas in general.

***

Amongst the busy lunch time sprawl at a Sydney University café, between the noisy chatter of students crammed at tables, I spoke to PS about Jura Books. PS had been a member of Jura Books during the 70s through to the early to mid-80s, a time he describes as “effervescently” active—just like the noise around us. We had been speaking for an hour or so. The lunch time sprawl had dulled. We maybe spoke for too long. “My car’s about to be booked, if it hasn’t been booked already.” (I’m deeply sorry if it was) But before he left he told me:

“One of the great things about Jura over the years is that it has been an opportunity for people to learn about anarchism, to learn about how to organise autonomously and work together in a collaborative way with rules, but with rules that are collectively decided and that are changed when they don’t work. They are not just rules for the sake of rules. Where [there are] people form very different backgrounds and generations…Sid, whose now one of the ‘old guys’ was one of the ‘young guys’. LM started when she was at university as an undergraduate. I started when I was an undergrad, now I’m an ‘old guy’ there. People learned to work in an anarchist way which in our society is not—maybe now is more available in kind of networked organisations.—But it’s also a way where people give without expecting material returns. There’s something very attractive about that kind of volunteer work.”

One of the Jura collective’s more recent ‘young guys’, Jeremy, had grown up during the apartheid in South Africa. “I was just a child, but I experienced a very racist, extremely class divided system which was incredibly barbaric.” He moved to Australia when he was 10, “it seemed like paradise, where people were very equal…you could go on the streets, you didn’t have to live behind six foot high electrified barbed wire.” Throughout high school, the rose tinted glasses began to fade. He started to notice that between Australia and South Africa, “there’s actually a lot of similarities, the way aboriginal people are completely dispossessed and oppressed in Australia is part of the same sort of colonial dynamic that [exists] in South Africa…that was a sort of eye opener.”

Jeremy began university at a particularly heated time. A number of debates and rallies were formed to oppose the Howard Government’s introduction of Voluntary Student Unionism (VSU). During his undergrad years he had also been involved with the student group ‘Red and Black’/‘Love and Rage’ which was a network of anarchists and libertarian-socialists across several universities in Sydney, such as Macquarie University, Sydney University, UTS, UWS. “It was definitely a time of upsurge in the movement and that group, ‘Red and Black’, was quite anarchistic, and that shaped my politics and helped me learn more about anarchism.” It was once he graduated, Jeremy decided to be involved in Jura because it was more “aimed at the long term.” Jeremy still considers himself an activist, but for him, “you can only go for so long doing political work that is like immediate and acting as if the revolution is coming tomorrow—which is great! It’s awesome when people do that and it has a certain energy to it. But Jura is not that sort of project. Jura is more of a project like recognising that the revolution isn’t coming tomorrow, but that we do want the revolution to come eventually, and to keep working until we get there.”

Jura Books does not organise any protests or activities. One of the main aspects of the project is to maintain a space for other groups to get together and organise things based on their own interests—so long as their activity is broadly in agreement with the Jura collective. Sid, the oldest current member at Jura Books, expresses the Jura attitude: “You guys over there, form a collective, form a group, run it how you like and we can support you, it’s not we who control you, we just support you.”

Sid has been at Jura for as long as it has been around. He recounts to me how he came across an anarchist movement as it was emerging in Sydney during the 1970s. Sid had begun thinking about anarchist ideas since he was 14. The student movements of the 60s and 70s had put alternative visions for society in the spotlight. Sid recounts to me seeing on TV student protests, the black riots in America, the Cuban missile embargo, and so on. There was a heightened sense of a crisis waiting to happen. The time was effervescent. “People were shit scared…for people of my generation it was almost like the First World War…we were like civilised Europe and we were tearing each other apart.” The social movements of the 60s and 70s instilled in people new ideas, optimism for a new world that was better, freer and more peaceful than the one they were living. For Sid, “the end point of Catholicism, the end point of Communism, the end point of Anarchism was all the same…a free world.”

To put it in the terms that Noam Chomsky does in a Jura books published zine called Goals and Visions (from the 1995 Sydney conference of the same name)—all three movements had the same vision, even if a vision of a “free world” is distant and vague. But their goals, the path that they take in getting to that vision are different. For Sid, “they all wanted a peaceful world that was all happy, bright and cheery…but the only one that made sense to was anarchism, which said we don’t have to go through this tortured way…of police, prisons, nuclear bombs…the only one that said: well here’s the path to get there directly.” Sid hadn’t intellectualised it like this at the time of 14. But it was in his head. His brother had moved out of home into a shared house in Glebe while he studied at university. It was in January 1975 when Sid had gone to visit him and stumbled across an anarchist squat in a local house —the famous 130 Glebe Point Road.

The houses nine bedrooms acted as the main dormitory for the nine day long ‘Sydney Anarchist Conference.’ Anarchist groups from across Australia had been convening to discuss the formation of a national organisation, the Federation of Australian Anarchists (FAA). The talk in the lead up to this conference had agitated for an organisation of local, regional and state groups into a national body. The talk emphasised that the FAA form on the basis of a mutual, common interest so as not to follow the trend of being “merely another leftist sect waiting for the day when they can set up a 'dictatorship of the proletariat.'”1 Throughout the preliminary discussions about what a federation would need to be, there had also been particular attention given towards the need for the distribution and creation of “propaganda”. An article from the FAAB2 writes,

"One needs groups of people who will take it upon themselves to publish magazines, newspapers, pamphlets or newsletters since these things are local in production however national their function. Similarly one needs groups that will maintain lists of speakers for propaganda work - and of course do propaganda themselves - as well as groups that engage in, or organise, research into topics of interest to the movement. It is the existence of such a network of specialisations that defines a federation as something more than the sum of its parts."3

These efforts towards expanding the availability of anarchist literature or “propaganda” in Australia have a beginning at 130 Glebe Point Rd. After the Sydney conference, the house remained in anarchist hands for eighteen months—it had become a centre for anarchist activity in Sydney.4 Sid tells me that in front of the place was a little bookstall with about three books on the table—“there weren’t many anarchist books in Australia at the time…and very few in English.” While the effort was impoverished, it would be the seed from which Jura Books would grow.

With the sacking of Whitlam later that year in 1975 came a desperation to leave—Sid remarks somewhat sarcastically—“this desolate, horrible place, this fascist Australia.” They went on a ten month backpacker trip of Europe along with some Marxists, social Democrats, and some Anarchists, a hodgepodge “lefty sort of milieu.” Visits to ‘Freedom Bookshop’ in London and ‘Shakespeare and Company’ in Paris provided new material that couldn’t be found back home.

Sid came back to get involved with sort of anarchist project. He got into contact with those who had been running that little bookstall at Glebe Point Road. While he was in Europe, the second FAA conference was held in June 1976. However during the conference a split had occurred in the FAA, between the ‘organisationalists’ and the ‘anti-‘organisationalists’—also referred to as the ‘carnival anarchists’ and the ‘serious anarchists’. A few of the ‘serious’ anarchists from Melbourne and Sydney put together what would be called the ‘Jura Literature Service’—taking its name from a group of 20-30 000 workers who had organised along anarchist principles in the Jura region of France and Switzerland.5 The FAA would see its third and final conference in January 1977.

John Englart, a past member of the Jura collective who was actively involved during these years, describes the Jura Literature Service as,

"Essentially a federation of three groups in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide around the activity of importing, distributing and selling overseas anarchist texts. Its initial capital was raised by donations, the three groups specializing in different overseas publishers, then trading stock with one another."

"The Sydney branch of the service saw itself as a group which was anarcho-syndicalist in orientation and whose long term aim was the distribution of 'a wide range of previously unavailable anarchist and related literature'. Its selling outlets consisted of stalls on the three university campuses and at the Domain (Sydney's Speakers Corner)."6

Talk of Jura or an FAA was not the first time Sydney had heard anarchist tongues. Quiet sometime before, in the 50s and 60s, a number of Spanish and Bulgarian anarchists—many of whom would later become key, respected individuals in Jura Books for their energy and contributions to the project—had been considerably active. From Europe they had brought an anarcho-syndicalist approach to the Sydney movement—a very ‘classical’ European brand of working-class anarchism which focuses on the autonomy of the labour movement through unionisation and action against the tyrannical structures of wage-slave capitalism.

Two of the Bulgarian anarchists in particular, George H and Jack Grancharoff—Grancharoff being an regular speaker at the Domain, where he also distributed the English anarchist paper Freedom7—arrived in Sydney in the early 50s and found themselves in a society with very few unsympathetic voices. They had practically come from poverty and from a political climate where they essentially risked their lives under the Bolsheviks for holding anarchist views. The Bulgarians worked closely with the Spaniards, such as Antionio Jimenz. George and Antonio found themselves a part of a group called ‘The Cellar’ near Oxford Street. A fellow named Bill Dwyer—who Sid described as a sort of individualist—had joined the group. He was an anarchist known for being “one of the best speakers at the Domain.”8 The group soon collapsed due to a police raid after Dwyer used it to distribute to Australia, for the very first time, LSD. George had also visited the Glebe Point house, but “[all] the 'anarchists' were stoned, so he just walked out again.” George disliked all the obscenity that was prevalent in the Sydney anarchist scene. A relentless “emphasis on ‘fuck’” that alienated all of those who “wanted a more, committed, serious approach.”9

Similarly, Jack had found himself associating with the infamous Sydney Push—a loose group of Pub dwelling, libidinal intellectuals; offspring of Andersonian libertarianism and Freudian gesticulation. Jack says that “the only way to a more anarchistic society is via libertarianism. They [the Push] had a social critique, but they didn’t believe they were going to change society…they don’t attack the hierarchy sufficiently, and also polygamy in no sense implies that there is no hierarchy in it.”10

The creation of an anarchist group that was committed to being a structured and permanent organisation with a commitment to longevity was much needed in the Sydney anarchist scene. While the activities of the Push—as well as those of Glebe Point Road and Bill Dwyers’ ‘Cellar’—had made an impact on Sydney’s social scene, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that a great deal of their efforts were focused on their immediate and personal impacts rather than the continuous and sustained efforts required to make any worthwhile social and political change.

For PS, “Jura was an attempt to develop a strain of organised anarchism within a Sydney scene that was very, I would say, dysfunctional.” The influence of the anarcho-syndicalism of George, Jack and Antonio, among others, would guide the formation of the Jura Literature Service beyond a dysfunctional Sydney scene to create an incredibly functional and pragmatic collective in the Sydney and the wider Australian anarchist community.

The Jura Literature Service began to expand into a larger, more permanent project. The service had played a vital role in introducing Australia to a wide range of previously inaccessible European anarchist literature. Sid got involved with the Sydney book service just as the discussions began about renting a storefront for the project. Not too long after in 1977, Jura Books found its incarnation as a solid bookstore, renting the building at 417 King St Newtown. But the revenue generated through selling books would never be enough to keep the collective afloat. PS, Sid and a few other members like the older European anarchists, had to pledge money each week to pay the rent, and when necessary, make small contributions to expand the range of the store’s stock.

During the early years at Newtown, Jura was open at least five days a week from 9.30 in the morning till 9 at night. PS recalls: “It was unbelievably long hours. People did three to four shifts that were rotated between twelve to fifteen members.” “We always had people staying overnight…for security reasons because we feared being attacked by fascists…so we used to sleep at that building in Newtown…filthy, disgusting place to sleep, but we did…I thought it was disgusting [laughs].”

While the Jura Books collective was active in King St, it was also working hard distributing literature at campus stalls. Another member I had spoken with, LM, had come into contact with the Jura collective through the bookstall that PS and some other members were running at Sydney University in 1982. The stall had generated enough traction amongst students that the Anarchist Collective student society was formed in order to keep the bookstall running on campus. Everyone had a key to the society’s locker which functioned as a mock-up library for the books and pamphlets that were bought primarily to inform the society’s discussions about anarchism. LM recalls the Anarcha-Feminist booklet Quiet Rumours as amongst the titles in the locker. There was also “Some Kropotkin, some Bakunin…maybe some Emma Goldman…pretty fundamental, introductory kind of books. Not really thick heavy ones, but shorter ones that people could read and pass around.”

After LM graduated from university in 1986, she got a job in regional Victoria. She maintained sporadic contact with some of the members from the Jura collective. Somehow or other she had heard about and participated in the Anarchist Centenary Celebrations being held in Melbourne in May that same year. Shortly after, LM returned to Sydney, “seeing how those celebrations had worked…I started to get involved in Jura and by the end of 1986 I was a member.”