A long-standing anarchist bookshop has been badly damaged in a suspected firebomb attack.

Police investigating the blaze at the Freedom Press bookshop in Whitechapel High Street, east London, are treating it as suspicious. Firefighters were called to the premises at around 5am on Friday and spent two hours extinguishing the blaze. No one was injured.

Around 15% of the ground floor suffered fire damage but the flats above the shop were unaffected.

Freedom Press, which owns the bookshop and publishes a monthly anarchist newspaper, is asking for donations to repair the damage as the premises was uninsured. "We're all absolutely shell-shocked," said Jayne, a member of Freedom Press who did not want to give her surname. "What's particularly annoying is that we couldn't afford to renew our insurance and it ran out last week.

"There's a lot of fire and water damage, which doesn't go too well with books. This wasn't an accident. Somebody had to lift up a mental shutter to break the window to start the fire. We do get this kind of trouble sometimes."

A post was uploaded on the Freedom Press Twitter page which said it was not yet clear whether its newspaper archives had been damaged in the blaze.

"Not sure yet whether archives survived – we had one of only a few sets covering almost the entire printed history of the paper boxed in shop," it read.

Further tweets stated a clean-up had been arranged to take place at the shop from 1pm on Saturday and a donations page was being set up.

Freedom Press was founded in 1886 by a group of friends, including Charlotte Wilson and Peter Kropotkin, and describes itself as the "largest anarchist publishing house" in the country.

It claims to stock thousands of books, newspapers, pamphlets along with magazines, periodicals and newsletters from major anarchist and radical groups.

A Metropolitan police spokesman said: "Inquiries into the circumstances of the fire are under way but at this early stage it is being treated as suspicious."

No arrests have been made.

I really wish I wasn't constantly furious.
I might have to stay away from the internet...

Freedom Bookshop Re-Opens after Fire

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Tim Gee | No Comments

After the arson attack on London’s Freedom Bookshop on Thursday, staff have announced that the shop will be open as usual today. Tim Gee reports from the clean-up over the weekend

Down a small alleyway off Whitechapel High Street, a short walk from London’s financial district, sits Britain’s oldest radical bookshop . Founded by Peter Kropotkin and Charlotte Wilson in the 1880s, it has been a hub for the city’s counterculture ever since – a pick up point for campaign materials, a meeting space for activists and a printer of radical literature, as well as selling books.

But my visit is not on a normal day. In the small hours of the previous morning an attacker had forced open a shutter, broken a window, and set the inside alight. Next to the broken glass is a shelf full of volumes on George Orwell – perhaps Britain’s most quoted opponent of book-burning. The fire and water leaves his image distorted and charred. The books are reduced to an inseparable block of pulp.

A throng of volunteers have gathered for the clear-up. Some are anarchists, others are showing solidarity with a group that has for so long shown solidarity with others. The atmosphere is somehow both cheerful and defiant. There is a human chain carrying salvageable books up the stairs. As there seems to be quite a queue forming, I join the other group, tasked with the soul crushing job of picking, cataloguing and disposing of the books that are damaged beyond repair.

We organise ourselves into sorters and cataloguers, the latter of whom playfully get called the bureaucrats. “Hey bureaucrat – I´ve got five copies of Thinking Housing´ here, can you note that down?”. “Bureaucrat, are you listening? Five Anarchy in Actions”. Becoming aware of the managerial system we are inadvertently mimicking we decide to change tack and buddy up, instead rotating roles. No more bureaucrat-worker divide. As it turns out, it´s more efficient too.

In a way it is a cheerfulness of necessity. The job of noting down books for the scrapheap is a sad one. The camaraderie is the only alternative to tears as we clock up three, four, five hundred volumes. The un-saveable ones are taken away in sacks.

In their place comes cake and tea, then hot food. A bike powered sound-system pumps out funk tunes. Then a cheer across the building as the electrics flicker in to life. There´s a call out: ´does anyone need a job?´ followed by a wry chuckle and a movement of the yet-more people who have recently arrived, in to the back yard to start cleaning shelves.

The pile finished I head upstairs. It is an altogether happier scene. Thousands of books are piled from floor to ceiling: Zapata of Mexico, Mutual Aid, a history of Anti-Fascist Action. Squeezed around the edge are tens of people, with standing room only, jay-cloths in hand, scrubbing, chatting, restoring and ruminating. Instead of the choking stench of ash that overwhelms the downstairs, the fresh odour of cleaning spray fills the air. One by one the books are lovingly relieved of their sooty second-covers and returned to their former glory. The items destroyed are just a fraction of those that remain.

Three hours later and the shop is transformed. Everything has been removed, the fire blackened walls are being cleaned, and staff predict they will open again by Monday. 60 volunteers with no discernible leader have pulled off an awe-inspiring display of self organisation.

If the attacker´s plan was to make important ideas disappear down the memory hole, it looks as if it has spectacularly backfired. As the clean-up operation shows, there is more than one way to encounter an idea. One is to read about it. But wholly more powerful is to experience it. And so it is today that written concepts are lived in reality and anarchy is demonstrated in action.

Was the place insured? how much of a payment will be they be getting?