Double podcast about the Angry Brigade, Britain’s first home-grown urban guerrilla group, in the 1960s and 70s, in conversation with John Barker, who was put on trial as part of the group.
Our podcast is brought to you by our patreon supporters. Our supporters fund our work, and in return get exclusive early access to podcast episodes, ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, free and discounted merchandise and other content. Join us or find out more at patreon.com/workingclasshistory
You can listen to our podcast on the below links, or on any major podcast app. Links to a few below.
Continuing our recent series of episodes about the UK in the 1970s, this is a re-edited, improved and re-released version of our episodes 2-3. It contains numerous additional audio clips, and written narrative to provide context and more information.
Episodes
- Part 1: Background, the formation of the group, its politics and its early actions.
E83: Angry Brigade, part 1 – Working Class History
- Part 2: Later actions, the criminal investigation, the trials, and lessons
E84: Angry Brigade, part 2 – Working Class History
- Bonus episode: Prison activism, escape plans, and the winter of discontent – Available exclusively for our patreon supporters
More information
- Gordon Carr, The Angry Brigade: A History Of Britain’s First Urban Guerilla Group (PM Press, 2010) – a detailed history of the Angry Brigade.
- The Angry Brigade 1967-1984: Documents And Chronology (Active Distribution) – a pamphlet containing a detailed chronology of the organisation and the scene of which it was a part, as well as documents produced by the group
- The Angry Brigade: The Spectacular Rise And Fall Of Britain’s First Urban Guerilla Group – a DVD documentary by Gordon Carr on the history of the group.
- John Barker, Futures (PM Press, 2014) – novel by John Barker set in Thatcher’s Britain.
- Timeline of Stories about the Angry Brigade
- TheHarrier.net – John Barker’s website including his other books and writings.
- Anselm Jappe, Guy Debord (PM Press, 2018) – the best biography of Situationist intellectual Guy Debord.
- Red Army Faction books – a collection of books about the German RAF.
- John Barker’s radical London playlist – a collection of tracks which Brigaders were listening to at the time.
Sources
- Gordon Carr, The Angry Brigade: A History Of Britain’s First Urban Guerilla Group (PM Press, 2010).
- The Angry Brigade 1967-1984: Documents And Chronology (Active Distribution)
- William Burr. 2023 Jan 4. Cold War estimates of deaths in nuclear conflict. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. [accessed 2023 Oct 5]. https://thebulletin.org/2023/01/cold-war-estimates-of-deaths-in-nuclear-conflict/.
- 2003 Jan 23. From student grants to tuition fees. the Guardian. [accessed 2023 Oct 5]. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jan/23/uk.education.
- UK Black Panthers Protest, Working Class History. 2023. [accessed 2023 Oct 5]. https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/article/10881/UK-Black-Panthers-protest.
- House Prices in Notting Hill. 2023. Rightmove [accessed 2023 Oct 5]. https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/notting-hill.html.
- The Humanisphere (excerpts) – Joseph Déjacque. 2018. libcom.org. [accessed 2023 Oct 5]. https://libcom.org/article/humanisphere-excerpts-joseph-dejacque.
- Foot P. 1986 Nov 20. “Harold, Row the boat aground,” London Review of Books 8 no 20 (November 20, 1986) [accessed 2023 Oct 5]. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v08/n20/paul-foot/harold-row-the-boat-aground.
- E81.1: Miners strikes bonus episode | Working Class History. 2023. [accessed 2023 Oct 5]. https://www.patreon.com/posts/e81-1-miners-90247804.
- The Lordstown struggle and the real crisis in production – Ken Weller.Libcom.org. [accessed 2023 Oct 5]. https://libcom.org/article/lordstown-struggle-and-real-crisis-production-ken-weller.
- Organized labor versus “the revolt against work” – John Zerzan. libcom.org. [accessed 2023 Oct 5]. https://libcom.org/article/organized-labor-versus-revolt-against-work-john-zerzan.
- 2009 Mar 9. From the archives: Ten held after Provo bombs blast London. the Guardian. [accessed 2023 Oct 6]. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/mar/09/archive-1973-london-ira-bombs.
- Beste R, Georg Bönisch, Darnstaedt T, Friedmann J, Fröhlingsdorf M, Klaus Wiegrefe. 2012 Mar 6. From Dictatorship to Democracy: The Role Ex-Nazis Played in Early West Germany. Spiegel. [accessed 2023 Oct 6]. https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/from-dictatorship-to-democracy-the-role-ex-nazis-played-in-early-west-germany-a-810207.html.
- Ron Jacobs, The Way the Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground (Verso, 1997).
- Tyranny of structurelessness – Jo Freema. libcom.org. [accessed 2023 Oct 6]. https://libcom.org/article/tyranny-structurelessness-jo-freeman.
- Maloney A. 2020 Feb 18. The true story of Misbehaviour that saw bomb go off at Miss World beauty pageant – and rotten veg hurled a… The Sun. [accessed 2023 Oct 6]. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/10980603/the-true-story-of-misbehaviour-that-saw-bomb-go-off-at-miss-world-beauty-pageant-and-rotten-veg-hurled-at-stage/.
- Ghosh, S.C. “The British Trade Unions and the Labour Law: The Case of the Industrial Relations Act 1971.” Relations Industrielles / Industrial Relations 35, no. 2 (1980): 251–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23071311.
- Lisa Christensen. 2009 Sep 2. Jack Prescott obituary. the Guardian. [accessed 2023 Oct 9]. https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2009/sep/02/jack-prescott-obituary.
- Athwal H. The hounding of David Oluwale. Institute of Race Relations. 2007. [Archived February 5, 2012, accessed 2023 Oct 7]. https://web.archive.org/web/20120205191734/http://www.irr.org.uk/2007/may/ha000008.html.
- Big Flame, “John Dillon” Ford Special 1 (February 1973), 6, accessed October 9, 2023, https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/big-flame/Ford-Special%20No.1%20Feb-1973.pdf.
- 4 Bedroom Houses to Rent in Stoke Newington. Zoopla. 2023. [accessed 2023 Oct 9]. https://www.zoopla.co.uk/to-rent/houses/4-bedrooms/stoke-newington/.
- On the death of Colin Roach and “community policing”, 1983 – Workers Playtime. [accessed 2023 Oct 9]. https://libcom.org/article/death-colin-roach-and-community-policing-1983-workers-playtime.
- Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping (Faber and Faber, 2011).
- Review: Vague’s Anarchy in the UK: The Angry Brigade – John Barker. libcom.org. [accessed 2023 Oct 10]. https://libcom.org/article/review-vagues-anarchy-uk-angry-brigade-john-barker.
- United Voices of the World timeline, Working Class History, accessed October 10, 2023, https://stories.workingclasshistory.com/tag/13676/united-voices-of-the-world
- University cleaners announce biggest ever outsourced workers strike in UK higher education. 2018 Mar 15. Independent Workers Union of Great Britain – Universities of London Branch. [accessed 2023 Oct 10]. https://iwgb-universityoflondon.org/2018/03/15/university-cleaners-announce-biggest-ever-outsourced-workers-strike-in-uk-higher-education/.
- Striking cleaners win victory against John Lewis. 2013. Counterfire. [accessed 2023 Oct 10]. https://www.counterfire.org/article/striking-cleaners-win-victory-against-john-lewis/.
- Scrap Britain’s Nuclear Weapons -. 2023 Mar 9. CND. [accessed 2023 Oct 10]. https://cnduk.org/campaigns/no-to-trident/.
- ACORN Affiliates – ACORN International. 2023. [accessed 2023 Oct 10]. https://acorninternational.org/index.php/categories/acorn-affiliates/.
- Loretta Lees and Hannah White, The social cleansing of London council estates: everyday experiences of “accumulative dispossession.” Housing Studies 30 no 10 (2020), 1701-1722. [accessed 2023 Oct 10]. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673037.2019.1680814.
- Broadway Market. 2023. libcom.org. [accessed 2023 Oct 10]. https://libcom.org/tags/broadway-market.
Acknowledgements
- Thanks to our patreon supporters for making this podcast possible. Special thanks to Jazz Hands, Jamison D. Saltsman and Fernando López Ojeda.
- Edited by Tyler Hill
- Theme tune is ‘Bella Ciao’, thanks for permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You can purchase it here or stream it here.
Subscribe
Listen and subscribe to WCH in the following ways: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Castbox | Google Podcasts | Overcast | Pandora | Pocket Casts | Podbean | Radio Public | RSS | TuneIn
Transcript
Coming soon…
Fascinating. I was in Grosvenor Square in 68 and Paris. I met one of the pople in this group at uni. It reminds me of the idealistic confusion of youth and our failure to bring about significant change. The people at the back shouting ‘forward’ made me smile. It led to a circulatary movement in any demo. When those from the back came up against the police truncheons, they circled back, with sore heads. I wore a crash helmit and was enveloped by the police lines and roughed up. For reasons I never fully understood, I was thrown back, ‘This one’s had enough.’ If I had been arrested, I could have been set on a downward spiral. The confusion of different motives and splinters on the left was clear from the interview. The working class credentials of the likes of prominent speakers like David Triesman and Tariq Ali, both of whom made interesting subsequent careers, are questionable. Student activists are rarely working class. La lutte continue! My novel, Revolution, written as aaron aalborg, was partly inspired by memories of these days.