YOUR attack on the Rising Free bookshop (8 February) is unfair and somewhat hypocritical. OK, so you disagree with their decision not to stock pro-Republican newspapers. But when have you ever baulked at refusing to handle material not to your liking? Your reluctance to publish an article by me on Ireland because it didn't quite fit in with your analysis is just one example from my own experience.
Libertarian independent bookshops such as ours and Rising Free have been a great service to the whole of the left. Unfortunately, however, political experience has taught us that should we be attacked by the state or right-wing forces, we could not expect much support or solidarity from the straight left.
Although we have not taken the same decision as Rising Free, we can sympathise with their reluctance to stock material which they disagree with and which could make them vulnerable to attack. But to describe this, as you do, as 'collaboration with the British government's repression' and 'indistinguishable from the methods of Stalinism' is completely unfair. Who's using Stalinist smear tactics now?
BOB DENT (News from Nowhere, Liverpool)