Paste-uppolit I


Phil Chamberlain is helping to map the heyday of the alternative press


t was September 1975 and a young Tony Harcup had arrived in Leeds. “I picked up a copy of Leeds Other Paper in a newsagent. Its 18 scrappily designed A4 pages contained an alternative selection of stories and attitudes. I


knew I wanted to be involved.” Harcup, an NUJ life member and journalism lecturer at the


University of Sheffield, was just one of thousands of people involved in a relatively short but intense burst of radical media activity that started around the time of the Grosvenor Square demonstrations against the Vietnam war in London in 1968 and continued until the fall of Thatcher in 1990. A project from the University of the West of England (UWE) is mapping the regional radical newspapers in that period and interviewing participants. It has identified more than 220 publications, some of which have not been archived and many not analysed. The major cities had a dozen each over the period, often covering specific districts, with London boasting close to 40. No part of the country was untouched. From the Waveney Clarion in East Anglia to Mother’s Grumble in the north-east, Yorkshire’s Cleck Hooter, the Pack-O-Lies in Liverpool, the Smoke and Whispers in Somerset, the Cwmbran Checkpoint, Belfast’s Resource, the Fapto in Margate and the Torry Citizen in Aberdeen. Some burned brightly but only for a few, infrequently


produced issues. Others ran for years, were published regularly and seriously challenged the established media. Leeds Other Paper and the Rochdale Alternative Paper are among the best known, breaking major stories and piloting the use of listings and arts coverage to draw in readers. Earlier this year, contributors from a dozen of these publications met in Bristol as part of the UWE project. Copies were pored over and a tin of Cow Gum reverentially passed around. Pat Tookey from Bush News in west London was involved. “We recognised the local press was hopeless and we didn’t


want the SWP [Socialist Workers Party] press,” she said. “There were lots of local issues like strikes and we realised we had the ability to do it. A lot of us were squatting and had just left university or were working part time or fallen in with a crowd with people we had met. None of us had children and we could afford to it.” The growth of the alternative press related to activity around squatting, community associations, print shops and book shops. Oxford’s Back Street Bugle began life at the Uhuru Cafe on the Cowley Road. Ned Gate in London’s


14 | theJournalist Below: Pat Tookey


Notting Hill would not have happened without the local Crest Press printing collective. Bruce Wilkinson, who had reported for Reuters from


Algeria, worked on the Swindon Free Press: “Because I had a flat and because I had previous experience, I effectively took it over. There was no editorial policy – every meeting was open to everyone but preferably if they could bring us something and do something.” Steve Poole, now a history professor at UWE, worked on the


Bath Spark. “Spark had no professional journalists – I was probably the nearest we came to that with my NCTJ certificate from Portsmouth Tech.” Many, like Leeds Other Paper, had a written manifesto,


while Billy Ridge from Ned Gate said the editorial strategy was simply ‘provoking anger’. This might not have been a slick approach but it quickly found a wealth of stories. Hedley Bashforth from Bristol Voice said that, as with


many others, housing was a regular feature. “Stories about squats, campaigns and challenges to the market, such as the Self-Help Community Housing Association,” he said. “For example, in 1981, the Voice was handed a list of the first 15 houses in Bristol to be


Read and write about radical press


THE UNIVERSITY of the West of England’s research project into the regional radical press has a blog site at https://radpresshistory. wordpress.com/. You can read posts from


people involved and there is a map of the newspapers uncovered so far. Archives are held in


various places including the MayDay Rooms in London, the Working Class Movement Library in Manchester and the University of Brighton. You can follow the project


on twitter @RegionRadPress and its authors are myself @philchamberlain, from the University of Bath, and


@RegionalHistory, from the University of the West of England, and Dr Jess Baines from the London College of Communication. They are always


interested in hearing from people who were involved and have them contribute posts.


A look back The literature on this period is relatively small. Tony Harcup’s Alternative Journalism, Alternative Voices is a good start by the former Leeds Other Paper journalist. Chris Atton’s Alternative


Media and John Downing’s Radical Media: the Political


Experience of Self-managed Communication are more academic approaches but very readable. Contemporary accounts


can be found in the Minority Press Group pamphlets including Here is the Other News by Crispin Aubrey and News Limited: Why You Can’t Read All About It by Brian Whitaker. Other histories include


Robert Dickinson’s Imprinting the Sticks; John Spiers’ The Underground and Alternative Press, and Nigel Fountain’s Underground: the London Alternative Press 1966-74. For a critique on how


alternative papers were run, try What a Way to Run a Railroad by Charles Landry, David Morley, Russell Southwood and Patrick Wright.


PHIL CHAMBERLAIN


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