Mark Brewer says, “Remove this page. Immediately.”

Which page, you ask? Well five pages, actually, specified in an email he sent on July 21st whilst I was on holiday. I’ll probably tell you about the others later, if somebody else doesn’t beat me to it. But it’s his demand that I remove the fifth one on his list of supposedly offensive pages that really has me riled:

5. http://www.christianbookshops.org.uk/spckdonate.htm (Support SPCK’s Booksellers, and the Phil Groom administered “fund”)

And if I don’t remove it?

If you do not do so; i.e., remove your websites by noon GMT July 22, 2008, I will seek an injunction against you, your colleagues, associates and companies.  I also will take legal action against each of you for damages for libel.  In that event, I will also subpoena all records relating to the persons whom you have allowed to post defamatory material on your website in order to add them as defendants.

Mark Brewer

So it’s not just me he’s gonna get, dear people: it’s you, if you’ve posted “defamatory material” on my website. As well as my “colleagues, associates and companies”. That’s a lot of people he’s threatening. But since, to the best of my knowledge, no one has posted any “defamatory material” on my website — on any of my websites, for that matter — I wouldn’t get too stressed if I were you. And the deadline’s been and gone, of course…

A friend commented on a remarkable coincidence: the date of that deadline is the same day that Randy W Williams issued his motion to dismiss SSG’S file for liquidation. 

But I am now so very, very angry. How dare Mr Brewer target the very page that I set up to raise funds to support the people whose livelihoods have been destroyed by this fiasco??

My only interest in this situation throughout has been to support these people, and (although hopes for this faded some time ago) to try and salvage something from the ruin that SSG has made of the former SPCK bookshops. Why? Because as Dave Walker kept reminding us, “It’s fun to shop at the SPCK”.

As you’ll see from my earlier correspondence with Mr Brewer — you’ll find it here — I’ve invited Mr Brewer to send me up to date details about the shops several times so that I can help to promote them and help people to find them.

And this outrageous demand to remove my Save the SPCK Booksellers page is his response!

Mr J Mark Brewer: I put it to you that this demand is malicious. I put it to you that the accusations you have made against me in your emails are libellous and defamatory and have no basis in fact.

I invite you, publicly, to retract this demand, to apologise and, as a gesture of good will, to make an immediate donation of £100,000 to the  Save the SPCK Booksellers fund, for redistribution to the booksellers whose livelihoods have been wrecked.

Only then will I be convinced that you have not deliberately set out to undermine these good people.

Thank you.