Back to index of Nerve 18 - Summer 2011

Merseyfin Lives

In the mid 90’s as two young anarchists of a class struggle/eco/punk/situationist nature, influenced by DIY zine culture, environmental direct action and a serious desire to dedicating our lives to changing the world in our own little ways, we met in Liverpool. In the ancient woodlands of Newbury, next to a felled 150 foot sycamore tree, we decided to resurrect MerseyFIN. Earth First! had grown from strength to strength. The rave scene had been politicised by the Criminal Justice Act and the traveller scene seemed to be ascending unstoppably. The advent of DIY punk culture and cheap photocopying saw the underground zine scene flourish, nationally and internationally. As these scenes blended, beautiful creative people created their own art, media and lifestyles... MerseyFIN was ‘rebirthed’ into this spirit.

MerseyFIN was the way we shared info for free in the years before the Internet, continuing work by earlier authors. Our first issue stated our aims and intentions:

‘FIN stands for free information network and there are 23 produced around the country. FINs grew out of the free festival movement in the mid 80s, publicising details of festivals, gigs, demos and actions, confronting issues that were and still are ignored or misrepresented by the mainstream media. The network is not a predetermined concept but a free, participating and self-creating media. Different FINs have different emphases, ideas.

MerseyFIN has not existed for a while. We feel there is a need and will give it a go. We hope to provide details of local and national campaigns, groups needing coverage and support. To encourage widespread communication and co-operation.’

We had no meetings as such, no deadlines, just free flowing, intuitive creation, driven by passion and injustice. In good ol’ cut n’ paste style we created the zine with scissors, Blu-Tack and Prit Stick. Our only constraint was financial. Out of our giros and a few donations we started off small - 500 A5 copies containing all of 16 pages, printed with the assistance of the excellent Manchester Area Resource Centre, distributed freely and chaotically. Slowly we built up to a monster 44 pages for the last issue, by which time our confidence had grown to write the occasional article ourselves.

We trawled the world’s media for our crazy little zine. We reproduced everything from letters from the Echo discussing scones to articles years ahead of their time on polyamory and sterilisation. We were unpredictable and stuck two fingers up to copyright and censorship. Over 10 years we managed less than one issue per year, but when people told us both that we had ‘blown their minds’ or ‘changed their lives for the better’, it was certainly worth the effort.

We haven’t created an issue in recent years and perhaps it is now time for someone else to take up the baton as we did. Since the FIN we have continued writing and creating - check out ‘Man Cry: Sunrise For Emotions’ (on male emotions and repression) and ‘Citizens Of The Wrong Type’ (on the history of forced sterilisation and other medical abuses of people by ‘their’ governments) - both available from News From Nowhere.

Our tag line said ‘when little is free and all should be’. We feel that as passionately now as we did back then. Check out our developing archive - http://merseyfin.blogspot.com

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