Diary Of A Squat (1989) Written by Jean Delarue Read by Dorothy Spencer and Carl Cattermole We loved this very rare and beautiful book so much that we made it into a free audiobook. Jean Delarue wrote this diary during his time spent at an autonomous squat operated by people who were homeless during Thatcher’s
Tag: History
An illustrated history of the birth of the Metropolitan Police
The brutal murder of George Floyd has once again forced police violence and racism into the public spotlight. On both sides of the Atlantic, people are starting to ask big, radical questions about the role of the police in white supremacist, capitalist societies. While much attention has focused on the US, the Black Lives Matter
Political reflections on the Poll Tax Riots 30 years on
This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Poll Tax riots. 30 years on they look both glorious and yet a tiny blip in the history of the people of the UK. They mark the last time that the working class won on the streets. The civil disorder culminated in major battles with police in
Southwark Spain Shop: anti-fascist shop in 1930s Walworth Road
This text first appeared at Transpontine blog. Edith Tudor-Hart (1908–1973) was an Austrian photographer who studied at the Bauhaus. Born Edith Suschitzky, she came from a left wing Jewish background and fled rising fascism to move to London having married Alex Tudor-Hart in 1933. They lived for a while in Brixton where she had a
Solidarity for West Papua is overdue
“Those Papuans of yours are some 700,000 and living in the Stone Age” said John F Kennedy in 1963, as he approved an agreement to hand over control of West Papua to Indonesia, ceded from the Dutch. That figure the US president so glibly negated an entire people with was a few hundred thousand off
Syndicalism and the working class experience
In this classic explainer of trade unionism without bureaucrats from 1952, Philip Sansom (pictured) considers the thinking behind anarcho-syndicalism before giving an example from the time — the fascinating and little-known Mutual Aid Society of the Euston railwaymen. The trouble with most theories is that they have so little relationship with the facts. One can
How we invaded Cuba
On Friday 12 July 1963, anarchists invaded the Cuban Embassy in London. Members of the British Communist Party, who had been faithful to the Party Line throughout the difficult war years, obediently switching from pro-war to anti-war and back, in support of Soviet foreign policy, were shocked in 1953, when Stalin died and the line
Book review: A beautiful idea … and a messy reality
A Beautiful Idea: History of the Freedom Press Anarchists Rob Ray Freedom Press, 2018 ISBN: 978-1-904491-30-9 Review by George F. Rob Ray’s history of the Freedom Press anarchists is like getting sat down next to that eccentric blue-hairred aunt at a wedding that you’d always heard stories about, but never quite gotten the full picture
Book review: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things
A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore Verso 2018 ISBN-13: 978-1-78873-213-0 Review by John Fullerton Welcome to the Capitalocene. Humans, at least some of them, are killing everything, from megafauna to microbiota, at speeds one hundred times faster than the background rate. The scale of destruction can’t
Interview: Bristol Class War in the 1980s
In this chat with a former Class War member, the Kate Sharpley Library discusses deindustrialisation, upheavals in the 1980s and thumbing the nose against Thatcher’s new normal. Can you tell us a bit about where you came from? I grew up in a town in the west of England during the 1970s. It was an