[Imc-uk-process] RE: Tony Gosling & Bristol / UK IMCs: feedback please

[Space Bunny]

Dear Indymedia United Kollectives and Indymedia Bristol people,

I am involved with Indymedia Scotland which mainly functions as part of 
Indymedia United Kollektives.

A few weeks I decided I would put to Bristol indymedia that it would be 
they decide on a new global liaison contact to be on
the imc-communication list. It is only indymedia list that groups  
recognised as part of indymedia network are obliged to have someone on. 
Someone who Bristol indymedia are happy to represent them should 
subscribe to that list and post an introduction.
p167 of indymedia booklet being printed at moment mentions the role of 
imc-communication list.

I then hope that Tony Gosling would unsubscribe from the 
imc-communication list and refrain from posting to it, so there is no 
confusion who is global liaison for Bristol (or UK) Indymedia.

It seems that Tony Gosling is happy anyway to remove himself from the 
Indymedia UK network bank account and admin of imc-communication list, 
there are enough other admins of list to manage it (I include them in cc 
of this email)
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-bristol/2004-March/001373.html
So it seems my concerns may no longer be as much an issue, but I will be 
putting them fully on the open lists in time for anyone to respond.

I feel Tony may have missed saying he would unsubscribe from 
imc-communication list as well as admin of it due to not placing same 
significance on being on it as I do and other will with it stated role 
of intra imc group communications to be taken back to each group. I 
think this may have been a fair enough error to make as it not sure if 
it does indeed functions like that and there has been confusion over 
global indymedia and role of liaisons from groups. After many groups 
never have need to issue an intra group communication that is concensed 
on by group. But I hope the Bristol group do find someone else to 
subscribe to group as group liaison and introduce themselves on the list.

You may be wonder why I did not put this to the indymedia Bristol group 
back then when I decided to. Well I was unsure as to Tony Gosling status 
within Indymedia Bristol realising that his posting to imc-communication 
did not necessarily mean Indymedia Bristol considered him their global 
liaison, I wished to ask someone active in Indymedia Bristol before 
framing an email on open lists to Inymedia Bristol. Also I wished to pre 
warn those activly involved in Indymedia United Kollectives.
I partly did this by emailing the imc-uk-contact list which has someone 
form each of the local indymedia groups of the United Kollectives on. I 
hoped to send an email to open lists shortly after but many people came 
back asking me to hold off for a while for various good reasons. I was 
happy to.

I am glad to let everyone know my concerns on the open lists, the 
details of which will come in a later email covering points I made to 
imc-uk-contact as I felt people should know reasons as to why I wish to 
ask for clarification status of Tony Gosling as regards Bristol 
Indymedia group.

In Tony's reply to Kyra he uses he involvement in various organisations 
to defend himself. I guess if anyone in those organisation would raise 
concerns his views or about groups he promotes, does he point to his 
involvement in indymedia as a defense.

Indymedia is a broad network and I got involved knowing I would have to 
live with parts of it I did not like. Being able to comprimise and work 
away through differences is a skill that one needs to get on in indymedia.
But it got to a point where I felt very uncomfortable being in Indymedia 
if this gave Tony Gosling credibility and wished to clarify his 
involvement and what other people thought.

Sorry to leave the meat of my critique of Tony Gosling till another 
later email but it does seem that Indymedia Bristol may be happy to 
clarify who is there global liaison without this, based on other issues 
of his involvement in there group. And my critique of him is not as 
pressing for people to form an opinion on.

I just wanted to quickly clear up how this recent episode started. And 
that I am quite happy to put my view about Tony Gosling to him on open 
lists.

bye for now,

Space Bunny
http://j12.org/sb/

kyra 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