We thought that the cafe could act as an easily approached gateway to the rest of the centre and would probably attract potentially interested peole in, while making some extra money to keep the centre open or channel into the chosen campaigns of the volunteers who did shifts. We wanted it to have an air of anarchy rather than servitude, so we put up big signs telling customers that it's a voluntarily run cafe and to do their own washing up if it looks busy. We formed a cafe collective which is basically a group of people who do one shift a week. We have meetings once a month to slag each other off and moan. The constant problem is not having enough volunteers to keep it open every day.
People tend to do shifts for a few months and then get fucked off with it and never come back.
I don't think any of us really think that the cafe is a particularly effective way of getting more people involved with activism, but it is a good way to introduce people to the concept of anarchy. Our customers range from activists, people with kids, Big Issue vendors and farmers, to businessmen, elderly people and students. This ran for a month, then there was a break, then another one was opened for a month in July, which moved straight on to another one which was evicted in September 1998. Eventually, they re-squatted the original building next to the university. The squats were intended mainly to get political ideas across through socialising, as political groups in Manchester were quite inaccessible.