[IMC-bristol] RE: Tony Gosling & Bristol / UK IMCs

[Ecovillage Network UK]

Hey, you can tell there's a war on ;-)

First I have given Ian (Ferguson) the credit he deserves for all the 
fantastic amount of work he's put in to admining the site and this list - 
but his 'Bristolian Party saves Bristol' agenda is totally against the 
spirit and letter of our guidelines. I have had serious problems with him 
deleting my features - and with personal threats, twice actually, of 
violence from him as well as his unilateral removal of me as an admin. of 
this list.  Particularly ian (F's) role in making sure the exclusive story 
about the new NATO computers being installed by US Marines at Corsham 
wasn't used in the central column despite the reasons for it being removed 
being shown to be false. These are - ultimately - editorial decisions and 
the fact is, there is no editorial accountability - actually there's no 
control over the password at all.

Yes I did use the words 'easton anarchist clique' to Tom but I didn't know 
Bone had moved. I wish him good luck with his new Bristolian paper - 
actually I really do - I was a subscriber to 'Class War' int the early 
nineties - but it is full of ha.

I hope people will understand my attempts to find out from London Tony what 
I am being accused of. And protect my source of such rumours. What are my 
links to the far right (that I so despise)?  How on earth am I supposed to 
explain or defend myself - the following reads like something from The Sun 
or the Hutton report - hate-filled prejudice entirely without factual basis

>So, to put Tony-G's email to London-Tony in context, I'll fill in what I 
>know of the situation:  Several people in other IMCs in the UK are 
>concerned about what they see as Tony-G's links to far-right 
>organisations.  Some of these people feel very strongly about this, and 
>have been pressing for action for IMC overall to formally distance itself 
>from Tony-G.  This strength of feeling seems to have come about as a 
>result of email exchanges between Tony-G and some in the Scotland IMC, and 
>through people in Sheffield IMC - who have faced problems with 
>anti-anti-racist threats - being denied support from an anti-racist 
>organisation because of IMC's link to Tony-G.  These people are also 
>concerned that Tony-G is active on national and international lists 
>representing Bristol/UK IMCs, but is actually unaccountable, doesn't 
>discuss with, or even tell, the rest of the groups what he's doing in our 
>name, and is expressing positions that the rest of the group/s don't agree 
>with.

Right wing groups such as:
Bristol Racial Equality Council
The Green Party
The National Executive of the National Union of Journalists
and the Global Ecovillage Network
So what you know is nothing - great!  I'm happy to go along to the next 
national get-together to see if any of these flaccid allegations surface - 
and defend myself there and then.

I have two external responsibilities for Bristol IMC at the moment and am 
only too happy to hand both or either of them over. Both ot them were 
requests sent to our list which I (as far as I know) was the only 
respondant to. One is to be one of only two signatories on the UKIMC 
Triodos bank account (the only one with a permanant address so my office is 
where the statements are coming to) and the other is as an admin of IMC 
comunications. Please consider this message a request for someone else to 
do that - let me know and I'll make you an admin instead. If you want we 
can decide this issue on the 15th.

As the person who gave the opening speech and facilitated the inaugural 
meting of BIMC I intend to continue - abuse of the password aside - my 
responsibilities for admining this list.

Always happy to answer allegations of being a right wing nut - despite 
being in the Trades Council and BREC - and as you'll see if you read this, 
a serious anti-fascist campaigner. If you don't - shame on you.
http://www.bilderberg.org/skulbone.htm


Tony
non-anonymous person

At 09:20 AM 3/3/04 +0000, you wrote:

>Things seem to have come to a natural crux regarding Tony Gosling and 
>Bristol IMC, prompted by himself, so I am emailing here what my 
>perspective on the situation is, in the hope that others will then have a 
>clear picture and/or provide other views.  Apologies for the length of the 
>following, but I want to be accurate in order to *hand over responsibility 
>for dealing with this to the whole Bristol IMC group* rather than just a 
>few of us.  I also thought it would be useful for all the UK people who've 
>questioned us about this to have a clear overview of the present 
>situation. Hopefully we can get all this in the open now, sort it out, and 
>then swiftly move on.
>[not urgent, so dont worry if you cant get back to me for a few days, i 
>appreciate its a lot to read, but should be mostly familiar]
>Kyra
>_____________________________________________________________
>
>Last Thursday I saw Tony-G at the Dialect broadcast, and he asked how the 
>last Bristol IMC meeting had gone.  Tony maintained that he wants to be 
>able to communicate better with Ian F. - I suggested that goading Ian F. 
>by regularly, and wrongly, accusing him of "taking over" B-IMC wasnt 
>helpful to this, and we had what I thought was quite a positive discussion 
>about the Tom Rintoul article [student journo does hatchet job on B-IMC] 
>and the now infamous/comedy "Easton anarchist clique" allegations, which 
>Tony-G acknowledged to be false.  Tony-G said that he had only wanted to 
>get back at Ian Bone - when pressed, he acknowledged that (as he well 
>knows) Ian Bone is not and has never been part of B-IMC and so in 
>badmouthing B-IMC he knew he was only harming us, and not affecting Ian 
>Bone at all.
>
>During this conversation, Tony-G didnt mention that, the day before, he 
>had sent the following email to London-Tony, (as I am calling him for 
>purposes of clarity... and not Croatian/London-Toni, for those whose minds 
>reach that far back, he's not around anymore, and this is a different 
>Tony, who has also been involved with UK/London IMC for years... confusing 
>i know):
>
>"I'm always interested to hear any gossip that might be circulating behind 
>my back - Mike from Bristol here came back from a London IMC meeting 
>recently with some horror stories  -  he siad I shouldn't take them 
>seriously but I always like to know who the sources of what are and what 
>theyre saying. Otherwise I can't put them straight. It's possible of 
>course that some might be true    I'm not perfect, but when people accuse 
>you of being some kind of Nazi when actually your exposing the shysters 
>it's galling to say the least. And I like to have the chance to let the 
>sources of such bullshit know their comments have got through to me. The 
>other aspect to all this is that if people are prepared to go to such 
>lengths to assassinate your character - you must be on to something." - 
>Tony-G, 25/02/04
>
>Firstly, Mike has not spoken to Tony-G at all about this, so it is 
>disingenous to suggest that he had, and particularly to say that Mike said 
>not to take the UK-IMC group's concerns seriously.
>
>Secondly, I now feel that my discussion with Tony-G, about why people find 
>it frustrating when he misrepresents them, was more relevant than I realised!
>
>Thirdly, I apologise to Tony-G and the group that Mike and I havent 
>handled this very well: I now think we should have fed back on the UK IMCs 
>concerns formally as soon as we got back from London. To be honest, we've 
>been trying to think of a way to handle this without blowing the whole 
>thing out of proportion. Because really its not very interesting or 
>important, and I'm aware that even by typing all this I give the whole 
>issue importance above its real status.
>
>*Obviously anyone that posts to a site can claim to be making Indymedia, 
>but in maintaining a claim to represent the Bristol / UK groups, a person 
>should be working with, rather than against those groups.*  Or choose to 
>be an independent IMC user.
>
>Although I dont know who told Tony-G about the UK's concerns or what 
>exactly they said, I'm glad someone said something, cos at least now we 
>can get all this out in the open and move on. Thanks also to London-Tony 
>for keeping us in the picture.
>
>So, to put Tony-G's email to London-Tony in context, I'll fill in what I 
>know of the situation:  Several people in other IMCs in the UK are 
>concerned about what they see as Tony-G's links to far-right 
>organisations.  Some of these people feel very strongly about this, and 
>have been pressing for action for IMC overall to formally distance itself 
>from Tony-G.  This strength of feeling seems to have come about as a 
>result of email exchanges between Tony-G and some in the Scotland IMC, and 
>through people in Sheffield IMC - who have faced problems with 
>anti-anti-racist threats - being denied support from an anti-racist 
>organisation because of IMC's link to Tony-G.  These people are also 
>concerned that Tony-G is active on national and international lists 
>representing Bristol/UK IMCs, but is actually unaccountable, doesn't 
>discuss with, or even tell, the rest of the groups what he's doing in our 
>name, and is expressing positions that the rest of the group/s don't agree 
>with.
>
>On behalf of Bristol IMC, and as mentioned at the last B-IMC meeting, Mike 
>& I have been asking for everyone to let B-IMC, as the local group, 
>resolve issues with Tony-G constructively, and to not go over our heads to 
>the global list with allegations against Tony-G.  However, since Tony-G 
>himself, although apparently aware of this, has not discussed his position 
>with us, but has started contacting individuals from the UK project about 
>it, perhaps we were wrong to think that this was the way forward.
>
>My concerns are not so much to do with the far-right-links allegations - I 
>don't know what the truth of that whole thing is, and people who know 
>Tony-G better than I do tend to think that this association is more to do 
>with his interest in controversy than anything else, and in his email to 
>London-Tony even he himself fights shy of giving a clear explanation - I 
>don't intend to pass any judgement on that at all.
>
>What I am concerned with, is Tony-G's contribution to our group: I am 
>concerned that Tony-G misrepresents who we are, what we do and why we do 
>it when he talks about B-IMC to others. As a professional journalist, he 
>must know that what he is saying is inaccurate and plain wrong, and so I 
>can see no explanation for it except an intention to cause trouble.  I am 
>also frustrated that we have to spend so much time dealing with the 
>fall-out of his 'involvement' in our group when he contributes very little 
>to the running of the site or to any other IMC work, other than complaints 
>about Ian F., meeting times etc..  I accept that he does occasionally post 
>a story, but then so do many other people who don't cause ten tonnes of grief.
>
>If people feel they can spare the time and that it would be worth it, I am 
>happy to set up a B-IMC meeting and invite someone from the UK IMC along 
>to mediate, and we can discuss constructively with Tony-G whether he is 
>prepared to work with us, and stop misrepresenting B-IMC / UK IMC, or 
>whether he would rather, as implied at the last meeting he came to, stick 
>to investigative journalism and submit stories as an individual 
>contributor separate from the group.  *Either way, we need to be clear 
>that he must drop claims to speak on behalf of Bristol  / UK IMC, until we 
>can be sure that he isnt just trying to stir things up for us.*
>
>Apologies again for length of this mail, but at risk of pushing it by 
>asking for more of your time, I'd really appreciate hearing people's 
>responses (specially Bristol people and of course Tony-G himself) and for 
>the Bristol group to now take this on.  I shall probably be seeing Tony-G 
>tonight if he comes to the Dialect broadcast, but I don't intend to talk 
>this out with him until I've heard back from some other people.
>
>Thanks for your time
>Kyra
>
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