Phone +44 20 7377 9088 | ||
Address 62 Fieldgate St, Shadwell, London E1 1ES, UK Similar Ernst‑Kirchweger‑Haus, De Blauwe Aanslag, Lucy Parsons Center, The 1 in 12 Club, Angel Alley (Callejon) | ||
The London Action Resource Centre (LARC) is a social centre situated in Whitechapel, in the East End of London. It is used as a meeting place for protest groups, including Queeruption and Indymedia in London. It was originally known as the Fieldgate Action Resource Centre. LARC is part of the UK Social Centre Network, alongside other projects which were set up around the same time, like the Cowley Club in Brighton and the Sumac Centre in Nottingham.
Contents
History
The building was formerly a synagogue and at one time housed the Louise Michel International Modern School.
Project
LARC was purchased in the autumn of 1999 by people active in Reclaim the Streets, just after the Carnival against Capitalism which occurred on June 18, 1999. It was rebuilt over three years. It was described in 2005 as "a hub of the new anarchist movement."
On its own website, the project states it is "a cooperatively owned and run building dedicated to the furthering of social justice and environmental issues, locally, nationally and globally. We believe this is done through direct action, refusing to be a spectator or waiting for someone else to do it for us. It is about taking back power and realising our potential to bring about change. This is an anti-capitalist, non-hierarchical space."
Despite this there have been various issues around hierarchical structure of the organisation. The library was set up to run on the principles of the Antisystemic Library on June 18, 2003. A split in the User Group over claims of institutional racism and of fascist infiltration of Peoples' Global Action. of which LARC is one of the founding info-points, led to the expulsion of the No Platform group West Essex Zapatista at the December 2004 AGM of the company. This led to the forced departure of the Voice Refugee Forum and eventually the relocation of the Antisystemic Library.