0:01

As unrest intensified in 1970s

0:03

Britain, a group of young

0:05

people decided to fight against

0:07

fascism, colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, factory

0:09

bosses and the conservative government.

0:12

Armed with guns, bombs and a sense of

0:14

humour, they called themselves the Angry Brigade, and

0:17

their story culminated in what became the

0:19

longest criminal trial in the UK to

0:21

date. This is working class

0:23

history. Bela-chow,

0:31

Bela-chow, Bela-chow,

0:34

Chow-chow, Al-Lama-tin-oh

1:02

Long-term

1:06

listeners

1:12

might recall that our episodes 2-3

1:14

were about the Angry Brigade. However,

1:16

like all of our first episodes,

1:18

it was basically raw audio from

1:20

our interview so the sound quality

1:22

wasn't great, there wasn't

1:24

narrative to fill any gaps, explain context

1:26

and pull the story together. So

1:29

in addition to making new episodes for

1:31

you, we're still going back over our

1:33

earliest episodes to re-edit and release them

1:35

in this new narrative format that we

1:37

use for all of our later episodes.

1:40

So we've added quite a lot of information

1:42

here to explain things better and tell the

1:44

story in a kind of cohesive way, so

1:47

we hope you enjoy it, whether

1:49

you listen to the original one or not. We've

1:51

decided to re-do this episode now because recently

1:53

we've produced a number of episodes about the

1:56

same time period in the UK, so our

1:58

episodes are going to be really good. 65

2:00

to 66 were about the 1972 builder strike, 67 to 68 were about the Grundwick

2:02

strike also in

2:07

the 70s and our episode 81 was

2:10

about minor strikes around the same time. The

2:13

Angry Brigade itself first emerged in the summer

2:15

of 1970 in the run-up to the election

2:17

of the Conservative government of Edwardy and

2:20

its activities continued for 18 months. The

2:23

Angry Brigade actions, intended as symbolic,

2:25

were followed by communiques explaining why

2:28

the targets had been chosen and

2:30

the Grundt commitment to rank and

2:32

file organisation and international solidarity. Targets

2:35

included the embassies of repressive regimes,

2:38

high profile police stations and army

2:40

barracks, sweatshop boutiques and factories as

2:42

well as government buildings. The

2:45

homes of cabinet ministers, the Attorney General

2:47

and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police

2:49

were also targeted. Scotland

2:52

Yard and MI5 launched a massive investigation

2:54

which led, in August 1971, to a

2:56

number of arrests and

2:59

two major trials at the Old Bailey. This

3:02

was Stuart Christie, a Scottish anarchist who was arrested

3:05

and charged with being part of the Angry Brigade,

3:07

who died in 2020. This

3:10

clip's from a documentary film about the group,

3:12

which we're using courtesy of PM Press and

3:14

the documentary is also available on the link

3:16

in the show notes. We're going

3:18

to use a few more clips from this documentary later on in

3:20

these episodes as well. Going

3:23

back a couple of decades before this point during

3:25

World War II, Western countries like the UK and

3:27

US were allied with the Soviet Union in the

3:30

fight against the Axis powers, principally

3:32

Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and

3:34

Imperial Japan. When

3:36

the war ended, the Cold War soon began,

3:38

a period of escalating tensions between the West

3:41

and the expanded Soviet Bloc. These

3:44

culminated to the point where there was a very

3:46

real risk of all-out nuclear war. This

3:49

absurd threat was something which provoked mass

3:51

protests around the world. People

4:00

I went on CND

4:02

marches. Campaign for New to disarmament

4:04

because I think when I was,

4:07

I would have been about 15, I think

4:09

when the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 or

4:11

three. And

4:16

I actually remember going to school and we

4:19

were talking in the school yard, is this

4:21

it? Is this gonna

4:23

be our, so it was quite, you

4:25

look at it in retrospect and you said, but

4:28

it was quite real. So I went on

4:30

CND marches and

4:33

then I went to university to

4:35

be a proper serious student. This

4:39

is John Barker, who was also later

4:41

on trial for being part of the Angroop brigade. My

4:44

co-host Matt and I caught up with him at

4:46

his flat in London. And I went to Cambridge

4:50

and I worked quite hard as

4:53

a student, but I found, it

4:55

was very, I mean, I come from

4:58

lower middle class family, but

5:00

in Cambridge to run really

5:02

into ruling class

5:04

actually, all the ruling class

5:07

being reproduced was quite, yeah,

5:11

kind of a shock it was right in your face.

5:13

You could see this is what it was. So this

5:15

may, this case started to give me a bit of

5:17

an edge. And

5:21

the other thing, the other dominant, which

5:27

of course, the people who've been in CND

5:29

then be involved in it, was the war,

5:31

isn't it? Now, this

5:34

was another thing when I was

5:36

in, so I went on, you know, various

5:38

marches, I had my first arrest

5:41

at Grovenor Square in 1968, I think. Right,

5:45

that was a big, yeah. Could you tell us a

5:47

bit about that? Well,

5:50

this was in Grovenor Square, it was

5:52

a mass demonstration. And

5:56

it was my first experience actually, where

5:58

you've found there were people. at

6:00

the back saying forward charge,

6:02

and you charge forward and

6:04

you find suddenly there's nobody

6:07

behind you. That was my

6:09

first kind of, you know, well this wise

6:11

up a bit. We and

6:13

I'm sure many of our listeners will have also

6:15

had similar experiences with this kind of situation with

6:18

self-declared leaders or back

6:20

road generals trying to direct others. Thank

6:23

God at the back, yeah, he was very, he was

6:25

like, you know, first world war and the officers in

6:28

the rear. But, you

6:30

know, it was just that it ended

6:32

up as a fine. And then at

6:35

university I met an

6:37

older, slightly older group of people

6:40

who were situationists.

6:42

And situationists is

6:45

now, unfortunately now

6:47

also a kind of archive

6:49

commodity, but the situationists were

6:51

a very radical group built

6:54

around a very important text by

6:56

Geeta Baugh called The Society

6:59

of the Spectacle. And

7:03

this kind of gave a much

7:05

more imaginative age to politics.

7:09

There was a kind of

7:12

slight arrogance to it, a very dismissive of

7:14

that, you know, that this is all, you

7:16

know, all being recreated, all bourgeois, it's all,

7:19

you know, which is, you know,

7:21

it is admittedly, but there was also a lot

7:23

of fun. The situationists were

7:25

a group of revolutionary Marxist

7:28

artists and intellectuals in France

7:30

who formed the Situationist International.

7:33

They were among the first to

7:35

theorise capitalism in its post-war consumerist

7:37

phase. They argued that the relative

7:39

material affluence of the working class

7:41

wasn't enough to stop class struggle,

7:44

but it was just another source of alienation.

7:47

John mentions their concept of recuperation.

7:50

This is the process by which

7:52

capitalism can incorporate elements of resistance

7:54

back into itself, rendering

7:56

them harmless and even profitable. A

7:59

good example of recuperation. and culture could

8:01

be punk music. Originally grassroots protest

8:03

music, now t-shirts or punk bands

8:05

are sold in high street chains

8:07

to sell an image of rebellion.

8:10

Recuberation happens in politics as well.

8:12

Trade unions for instance began as

8:15

illegal fighting organisations of working-class people.

8:18

Many places were eventually incorporated

8:20

into a legalistic industrial relations

8:22

framework in which workers discontent

8:24

is more easily managed and

8:27

in some places like the UK, unions have

8:29

even been incorporated to an extent into the

8:31

management of the state where they call on

8:33

members to accept wage restraint, for example

8:35

during the winter of discontent of 1978 to 9. This is what Situationists

8:40

meant by the recuperation of struggle.

8:43

Though the Situationist International were always a

8:46

very small group, their ideas became highly

8:48

influential on radical thinking, particularly during the

8:50

events of France in 1968. We've

8:54

got some books about the Situationists in our

8:56

online store available on the link in the

8:58

show notes. The Situationists

9:00

also organised situations

9:03

or happenings aimed at puncturing

9:06

the monotony of everyday life. We

9:08

invaded Mayballs and... Mayballs?

9:12

Mayballs? Oh Mayball, Maybell. Mayballs were the kind

9:14

of things you had at Cambridge where people

9:16

go in dinner jackets and you know Cambridge

9:18

has all these colleges and each college would

9:21

have this Mayball and they'd have a band,

9:23

you know they have lots of bands and

9:25

champagne and you'd pay so much and I

9:27

think you had to go in a dinner

9:29

jacket and I

9:31

think this would be in my

9:34

last year we invaded one in

9:36

one of the colleges climbing over

9:38

the walls. So

9:40

that was that and

9:45

it was an outlet for the real kind

9:47

of kind of hatred I

9:50

developed for this world

9:54

in Cambridge which

9:56

then manifested when a group of

9:58

us decided that

10:00

we would not take our

10:02

final as a pay test against.

10:06

What we said was that education was

10:09

an elitist system, that its main function

10:11

was one of exclusion, and

10:13

that Cambridge was one of the clinicals of

10:16

this process of exclusion.

10:18

And also in several

10:20

other universities, something

10:23

similar happened. People tried

10:25

to present it as

10:28

a protest against exams, as

10:31

if it had continuous assessment would have

10:33

been okay, which it wasn't. And

10:36

it was the first time I've been involved in

10:38

the kind of, we did a lot of street

10:40

theater, and come the day,

10:42

I think it was seven of us,

10:46

ripped up our papers and sat down with the

10:48

sass, down with the n-e-t-s, and

10:52

again, I look at this in retrospect,

10:54

and you think, well, perhaps

10:57

this is quixotic, and

11:00

looking at how young people are

11:03

now, maybe

11:05

it was a luxury for us that

11:08

we could do this, that you didn't

11:10

have this terrible

11:12

anxiety about getting a job,

11:15

all this stuff.

11:17

On the other hand, it's the

11:19

one thing I have never regretted

11:21

doing. Indeed, looking back from

11:23

2023, it can sometimes

11:26

be hard to understand where people are coming from

11:28

in different points of the

11:30

past. So at this time, mass

11:32

working class struggles for years had

11:34

forced significant concessions to improve workers'

11:36

living standards and public services. Free

11:39

university education, and even getting grants covering

11:41

your living expenses, sounds like a great

11:44

deal now that grants are long gone,

11:46

and fees have been introduced, and then

11:48

increased year on year. After

11:50

university, John moved to the capital.

12:00

where there was a group of, it was

12:02

called King Malbeco, which was

12:05

the kind of public face

12:09

of British situationism who did quite,

12:12

you know, kind of witty, subversive

12:15

stuff, did some wonderful

12:18

graffiti. And there,

12:20

well, the first thing that happened, because actually,

12:22

though, one could, you could get a job.

12:24

It was also, you could go on the

12:27

dole and you could basically survive on the

12:29

dole. And I became involved

12:31

in the West London Claimants Union.

12:35

One of the things I do regret is that that,

12:37

you know, that I didn't continue,

12:40

because I think it was a kind

12:42

of model organization in which the rule was

12:45

you either had to be on the dole

12:47

or to have been on the dole in

12:49

the last 12 months. So it avoided any

12:51

kind of professionalization of the thing.

12:54

And we, you know, we

12:56

would have actions in solidarity, we'd go to

12:58

dole offices to defend people that

13:01

they, because there was, you know, there's a whole big

13:03

thing about protecting

13:05

women on the dole. And

13:07

did they have a man sleeping with them and

13:10

then they were going to get cut off

13:12

this crime. So you'd go and argue the

13:14

case en masse in welfare

13:16

offices. And also, because

13:18

at this time, coincidentally, you

13:21

know, the mangrove restaurant was the

13:24

crucial focal point

13:28

of radical politics in

13:30

the area. And you had a very, very

13:33

heavy, oppressive police presence.

13:37

The mangrove was a Caribbean restaurant run by

13:40

Frank Critchlow at the center of the black

13:42

power movement in London at that time. It

13:45

was subjected to repeated police raids, which

13:47

home office documents later revealed were part

13:49

of a plot to try to disrupt

13:51

radical black organizing. During

13:53

a protest against the raids, nine black

13:56

Londoners were arrested and charged with conspiracy

13:58

to incite a riot. Their

14:00

story is told in the recent Steve McQueen

14:02

film, Small Axe. To clarify

14:04

for non-UK listeners, the dole here

14:06

refers to unemployment benefits. Subsequently,

14:09

they also went on trial, it's

14:11

called the main growth trial, which

14:14

becomes extremely relevant to my own

14:16

trial. But anyway, they

14:18

were the focus and it was a lot

14:20

of police and somehow even though we were

14:22

kind of long-aired, you know, long-aired hippies, they

14:25

got on with it, we got on with them fine.

14:28

And we're

14:31

involved in various demonstrations

14:33

against the police. John

14:36

and his friends also got involved in

14:38

other activities, like producing a radical newsletter

14:40

called Strike and supporting the local community.

14:42

This was heavily working class at the

14:44

time, very different than Notting Hill today,

14:47

where the average property costs over £1.5 million. And

14:52

then the one of

14:54

the things

14:56

that, you know, he said, yeah, I'm really

14:58

glad I did this and it stands out.

15:01

And this was very much the local

15:03

situationist initiative, but

15:06

in some coordination with,

15:10

particularly with a radical group

15:12

of mothers looking for a

15:14

playground. And

15:17

at this time, Parris Square, which is

15:19

a square just off Portobello Road, was

15:21

still a private square, it's a key

15:23

to get in the square. And

15:26

we invaded the square

15:30

and with the knowing, and

15:32

the women immediately followed this up to set

15:34

up the playground in the square and it's

15:36

still there now, it's still a public space.

15:39

The movement which John identified with was

15:41

the libertarian movement. Nowadays,

15:43

many people associate the word

15:45

libertarian with right-wing free market

15:47

ideology. But the word was

15:50

originally coined by a French anarchist communist,

15:52

Joseph de Jacques, in the mid-19th century. It's

15:56

a term which is more broad than just anarchist,

15:58

which generally applies to the whole world. of

16:00

the left which seeks to achieve

16:02

revolutionary change from below by workers

16:04

ourselves and not through a

16:07

state by politicians. So it includes

16:09

anarchists but also a good number

16:11

of others including some strains of

16:13

marxists and communists like the situationists.

16:16

A big thing from

16:18

let's say the libertarian movement was to say

16:25

that the

16:27

revolution is not some key

16:30

loss in the, you know, it's not something that

16:32

oh we'll get the revolution in

16:35

the way that you lived, the way

16:37

that you acted, was part of making

16:39

the revolution. I mean and then you

16:41

know people theorise it is a revolution

16:43

of everyday life which I think is

16:46

kind of, it's not quite that but it was

16:49

certainly the notion that how you lived, how you

16:51

behaved to each other, comradeship,

16:54

the idea of living commonly and so

16:57

on, that this

16:59

was a, I think, a

17:03

really big change which starts at this moment

17:05

and of course this is fuelled by the

17:07

women's movement and of

17:10

course by the black power

17:12

movement. In its very

17:14

BBC kind of way, journalist Gordon

17:16

Cott tries to explain how ideas

17:18

of living in urban communes spread

17:20

from the revolutionary counterculture in Germany

17:22

to the UK. The

17:49

decorated women have children and a great deal of

17:51

care is put into bringing them up to fit

17:54

into the world they want. Commune

17:56

children eat, sleep and play together.

17:59

Outside the commune, they join in what's

18:01

known as kinderlarden. Originally

18:06

these groups were set up to allow

18:08

commune mothers more time to attend political

18:10

demonstrations. But a system soon

18:12

began to build itself into the plan. The

18:15

children were encouraged to develop free from

18:17

any kind of inhibition, free

18:19

from any competitive instinct. In

18:28

Britain these experiments in revolutionary lifestyle were

18:30

slower to catch on. But

18:32

when they did, it was in the Notting Hill area

18:34

of West London that they first took root. This

18:38

was the moment when libertarian communism,

18:41

what was, asserted

18:44

itself in a lot of ways. Which

18:49

coalesced briefly around

18:51

the 1970 election when we

18:53

had I think the first

18:56

demonstration that actually went through

18:58

the City of London, the

19:00

Finance District on election days.

19:02

And you know

19:04

it makes sense. I think you know it makes sense

19:06

was one of the, I

19:09

think it was the Labour Party slogan. The

19:11

1970 election was the one which was lost

19:13

by Labour's Howard Wilson. Former

19:16

miner Dave Douglas spoke about this in our episode

19:18

81, explaining how disillusioned many

19:20

people were with his government, which

19:22

was elected with a huge mandate and a

19:24

huge majority, and a pledge to implement socialism.

19:27

Well, didn't really do much in terms

19:29

of implementing socialist policies. Quite

19:31

the opposite in fact in many cases. This

19:34

same time period had a great deal with

19:36

industrial unrest, with frequent strikes, which

19:39

John and his friends intervened in with differing

19:41

levels of success. And in

19:43

the funny experience because I

19:45

wasn't, you know, I wasn't in the

19:47

trade union. I was sort of lay

19:49

about, really. But

19:53

it had two completely different

19:55

experiences with claimants as claimants

19:58

unions. There

20:00

was a postal strike, I think it was

20:02

in 1917, and we

20:05

went and leafleted postal workers on strike,

20:07

showing them how they could claim benefits

20:09

and so on, and got very well

20:12

received. And then the

20:14

same thing happened with the Prita strike in

20:16

London, and we're doing the same thing, and

20:18

they're saying, fuck off you long-eared. So

20:21

that gave us this, you

20:23

know, completely different reactions.

20:27

In the early 1970s, it was a lot easier

20:29

to be a layabout than it is today. Well,

20:31

no, it wasn't just, you know, sometimes we

20:33

had to work, and we were doing, that

20:36

came known in our trial, we were also doing

20:38

cheque fraud, which was,

20:41

called was much easier in those days. But

20:44

I have to just explain cheques, where

20:46

perhaps people don't use them at all

20:48

anymore. So it was a way you

20:50

could, you know, you could steal a

20:52

cheque book, create, and

20:54

so we became quite adept at creating ID,

20:56

which again was much easier, it was none

20:59

of this, you know, now, creating

21:02

ID now is difficult, really

21:05

professional work. So

21:08

there was a combination

21:10

of the dole and,

21:13

yeah, cheque fraud. You

21:15

could then use the cheques and fake IDs to

21:17

pay for things you needed, like groceries and clothing.

21:20

To supplement his income, John occasionally engaged

21:22

in wage labour as well. And

21:25

a bit of part and sometimes, yeah, sometimes you get,

21:27

you could get on a work on a building site

21:29

for a couple of months. So

21:32

it was a mix of all these things. And

21:35

just to say once again, it was so much

21:39

easier then, you know,

21:41

at all levels. I mean,

21:43

rents were relative to what

21:45

you earned, much cheaper.

21:48

As we discuss in our podcast

21:51

bonus episode 81.1, while

21:53

nowadays the 1970s is referred to

21:55

like it was a grim and

21:57

nightmarish time with dead bodies and

21:59

rats. published piled up in the streets

22:01

and no electricity. In reality

22:04

it was the time period with the

22:06

lowest economic inequality in British history with

22:08

the highest standards of living for working

22:10

class people. This relative

22:12

affluence had its origins in World War

22:15

II. My mum and dad and

22:17

a lot of other men, they fought this war.

22:20

They fought this war for the state.

22:23

World War II? Yeah, World War II.

22:26

And in a way they had to

22:28

be rewarded. And us

22:30

the kids, we got the reward. We

22:32

got free university education. Without

22:36

fighting the war. Without fighting the war.

22:38

This was a reward for the children

22:40

of the parents who've done it. I

22:42

only think about this in

22:45

retrospect, but I'm sure this was the case. At

22:47

a certain time around 1975 the ruling class

22:50

suddenly said, fuck

22:52

this, we paid you off now.

22:55

Because you could

22:58

say, oh well maybe from one

23:00

point you can say, well we took the piss actually.

23:03

Suddenly having this relatively

23:06

easy situation we took the piss.

23:09

But this was a whole, it

23:11

wasn't just a few dropout layabouts.

23:14

I mean this was, I think,

23:17

the young working class actually

23:19

was assertive. You see

23:21

it culturally

23:24

at all levels. There

23:26

was this real self-confidence.

23:30

And if you'd been brought up, I was a

23:33

kid in the 1950s, this

23:36

was extraordinary. That

23:39

the voice of authority in a way,

23:41

what it wasn't just hippies and so

23:43

on, it was actually a voice of

23:45

authority being, I think, seriously undermined.

23:50

And obviously they expected,

23:53

the expectation was from,

23:57

let's say the ruling class, was

23:59

that you, you, You would have a highly

24:01

educated generation who would now be the white heat

24:03

of technology. A

24:15

lot of young people did become part

24:17

of the white heat of technology, a

24:19

lot of people didn't and

24:21

asserted themselves in a

24:24

lot of ways. You see people writing about this

24:26

now as if it was a sociological truth, that

24:28

it was much more creative in

24:30

those times, precisely because you

24:32

could survive on the bell because you didn't

24:35

rent, didn't strangle you. Some

24:37

people on the left seem to think that

24:39

workers only rebel if their conditions are truly

24:41

dire and feel that better off workers

24:44

will be content with the status quo. But

24:46

this attitude isn't borne out

24:48

by historical events in the

24:50

early 1970s in developed countries as

24:53

well as huge strikes and protests,

24:55

there was widespread revolt against work

24:57

itself. Absenteeism, that is workers

24:59

just not bothering to turn up to

25:02

work, lost far more working days than

25:04

strikes did. In Italy, Fiat

25:06

factories had an absentee rate of 18%. Car

25:10

manufacturers in Sweden had absentee rates of 15-25%

25:12

a day. In

25:15

Britain it was generally a bit lower, more like 6% on

25:18

average, but a one car factory nearly a third

25:20

of the workers didn't turn up on a given

25:22

day. One US auto worker

25:24

was asked what work at his factory

25:27

was like on Mondays in summer. He

25:29

said he didn't know because he'd never been in for one.

25:32

Another was asked why he only turned up to work

25:34

four days per week. He replied, because

25:37

I can't make enough money and brew. In

25:39

addition to this generally rebellious atmosphere, there

25:42

were a number of other key factors

25:44

which contributed to some people starting to

25:46

think that armed guerrilla activity would be

25:48

both justified and beneficial. the

26:00

actual level of repression here. So

26:02

it began really as an internationalist

26:05

level for repression of comrades in

26:07

Spain and Italy. Spain

26:09

at the time was still run by the

26:11

brutal Franco dictatorship. Spain was still

26:13

run by in which comrades were being

26:16

garroted and

26:19

in Italy where, in the

26:22

famous play called Accidental Death

26:24

and Anarchist, where comrades had

26:26

been thrown out in

26:29

high windows in police buildings and so on.

26:32

So this, in a way,

26:34

begins as a notion of international

26:36

solidarity. The

26:38

other context is, of course, what's going

26:40

on in Ireland, which

26:43

from 1968 onwards is becoming, actually,

26:49

again, in retrospect, I think deliberately

26:51

militarised by the British state. So

26:53

there is a suddenly political violence.

26:55

It is not un-

27:02

Oh, I can't say. Un-British. In

27:06

a way, Irish comrades

27:08

wouldn't say this, but

27:10

so there's this going

27:12

on. And also, yeah,

27:14

I mean, from my own point of view, class

27:19

hatred. Now, I know that

27:21

class hatred in itself is insufficient

27:23

to make anything. And as I

27:25

said before, we also thought, well,

27:29

it's how you act,

27:32

how you try and live

27:34

out a kind of communist way of

27:36

living with each other rather than looking

27:38

at the revolution as a tig. But

27:40

on the other hand, I do believe,

27:42

and I still believe, that without class

27:44

hatred, nothing actually

27:47

moves. Because

27:51

class hatred is one

27:53

of the things when

27:56

you see how much actually people's

27:58

lives are. caged

28:01

in, oh, oh, oh.

28:04

There's a kind of meanness to it

28:06

all the time and obviously in recent

28:09

years this meanness has actually become so

28:11

manifest in the kind of,

28:13

that kind of, that brief period in

28:15

which I was lucky enough to be

28:17

a young person, you know,

28:19

they were never going to have this again, never

28:21

going to have a confident working

28:23

class. And

28:26

you could see, I think that at this

28:28

time, I don't want to say I was

28:31

clairvoyant or so bloody clever, but I think

28:33

there is a moment that you can see

28:35

around, as early as 1971, that you can

28:41

see that there's a shift in,

28:44

that the capital is going to go

28:46

on the offensive, that they've had enough

28:48

of this. The rate of profit

28:50

is, I mean, I don't know enough about the rate

28:52

of profit, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I'm just

28:54

saying, I'm just saying, I'm just speaking to you,

28:56

that you've felt this big. They've had

28:58

enough of this culturally, they don't like

29:01

this confident working class, both in the

29:03

United States and here, and

29:05

they don't like the

29:07

kind of labour, in discipline, that they

29:10

really don't like. To

29:12

this naked state violence in Spain, Italy

29:14

and Ireland, some people decided it was

29:16

time to respond in kind. And

29:20

rightly or wrongly, people

29:22

I knew thought that there

29:24

should be some attacks

29:31

on individual representatives of this

29:33

thing. One of the clear things,

29:36

we read a text by a man

29:38

called Martin Nicolaus, who

29:41

wrote about why

29:43

does sociology, why does sociology work

29:45

solely on the poor? Why is

29:47

there no sociology of the rich?

29:51

And he argued this very well, and

29:54

it's quite

29:56

easy to skip that, A,

29:58

they're quite difficult. want to be

30:00

exactly that I want to be under a corpse

30:02

light and we would

30:05

there was a I think in

30:07

a month various comrades with the

30:09

idea that you couldn't

30:11

just say that

30:14

these were inevitable decisions

30:17

or actually individuals made

30:20

individuals within the elite made decisions

30:22

which affected the lives of thousands

30:24

of other people without affecting their

30:27

own lives so I think this

30:29

was very

30:31

much at the same time

30:34

through connections to the underground resistance to

30:36

Franco long-haired countercultural dropouts

30:38

in London had access to

30:40

weapons explosives and bomb making

30:42

instructions from people with years

30:44

of experience of guerrilla warfare

30:47

I think these were very very well known

30:49

skills from the Spanish anarchist movement which

30:52

were passed on by word of mouth

30:54

the technique was in fact very very

30:56

simple and I think had been used

30:59

for a long

31:01

time and were fairly

31:04

reliable in terms of timing and so

31:07

on. The

31:09

first of May group was an anti

31:11

Franco guerrilla group formed by Spanish anarchist

31:13

exiles they undertook a number of attacks

31:16

around Europe August

31:20

the 20th 1967 the time

31:23

a quarter past 11 a

31:26

white Ford Cortina drives down Park Lane in

31:28

London's West End in

31:30

the car three men young Spanish

31:33

anarchists they

31:40

turn into Grover Square draw alongside

31:42

the American Embassy this machine

31:52

gun attack on the US Embassy

31:54

was in solidarity with the Vietnamese

31:56

anti-colonial struggle the US black liberation

31:58

movement and we liberation movements in

32:01

Latin America, fighting against various

32:03

US-backed right-wing dictatorships. In

32:05

1968 and 1969, they bombed Spanish

32:07

government and bank buildings in London.

32:10

The first action attributed to the Agribegade

32:12

by prosecutors was a bomb which didn't

32:14

go off, but was planted in the

32:17

new Paddington Police Station in May 1971. Part

32:21

of the police station had specifically been

32:23

built to house Irish independence fighters. The

32:26

political situation in Spain and elsewhere

32:28

was obviously extremely dangerous and serious.

32:31

Those who formed the Agribegade acknowledged that

32:33

their situation was very different, and

32:36

while they wanted to show solidarity with

32:38

revolutionaries elsewhere, they had a

32:40

pretty light-hearted approach, which should be clear from

32:42

their name. I was just silly

32:44

name actually. Yes,

32:47

I think there was a

32:51

sense of humor. The other thing that I,

32:55

again, it's difficult to say from

32:58

the relatively easy time.

33:00

We were all so, you know, rural

33:02

drug culture. And

33:07

I took quite a lot

33:09

of acid. I'm not saying

33:11

that acid, you know, I

33:13

mean if you look again

33:15

at retrospect, I mean acid

33:18

was very good for me actually.

33:20

I think it opened up

33:22

kind of, you

33:25

thought, I mean particularly in

33:27

relation to authority, it really

33:29

made authority just ludicrous. And,

33:33

you know, there was a lot of grass

33:35

around people. You know, it was very much

33:38

a hedonistic drug culture. That was part of

33:41

this class confidence, what

33:43

I would call the

33:45

work in class audacity,

33:47

which was hedonistic

33:49

in a way which was

33:51

not so consumerist actually. These

34:01

included bombings of the home of Metropolitan

34:03

Police Commissioner Sir John Waldron and two

34:05

separate bombings of the home of Attorney

34:07

General Sir Peter Rawlinson. It's important to

34:09

point out that all these acts were

34:11

planned very deliberately not to injure or

34:13

kill anyone. While

34:15

these actions might seem extremely serious, the

34:18

Anger Brigade didn't take themselves very seriously at

34:20

all. It's difficult to

34:23

say that you're very serious

34:25

about your politics and

34:28

at a certain level you don't

34:31

feel, you know, massively serious in yourself.

34:34

Now this is maybe a fault, I don't

34:36

know, maybe if you are going to be

34:39

really serious you have to

34:41

be really serious. I'm not saying one

34:44

thing or another but there

34:46

was a feeling that we

34:48

were serious about what we believed, serious about

34:51

that we were going to act on what

34:53

we believed but not serious in the sense

34:55

that we were going to change

34:58

the world, take state power,

35:01

programme, so to say. Looking

35:04

back today this might seem really strange, especially for

35:06

younger people in the wake of the 9-11 attacks

35:08

and the war on terror and

35:10

for slightly older people in the UK

35:12

after decades of bomb attacks by the

35:14

Irish Republican Army, IRA. But

35:17

1970 was before all that really and

35:19

the environment was completely different. That

35:22

context is obviously crucially important, you know,

35:24

in 1972 I think it was 1972,

35:26

the old Bailey bombing, I mean it

35:29

really changed everything. This

35:31

bombing actually happened in 1973

35:34

but this was a car bomb placed outside

35:36

London's most famous courthouse, the old Bailey, with

35:38

another which went off outside the Ministry of Agriculture.

35:42

This was the first major attack on the British

35:44

mainland since the start of the Troubles which killed

35:46

one and injured over 200 people. After

35:49

this terrorism in the UK became a big deal,

35:51

much like it did in the US after 9-11.

35:54

The idea was strictly to damage

35:57

property and not damage people, so

35:59

you could say that. in a way that this

36:02

was again retrospectively

36:04

I can say this is an extension

36:06

of the theater kind of

36:08

street theater we were doing in the anti-assessment

36:12

campaign of students. That

36:15

it was a kind of theater

36:19

with an edge. And

36:22

obviously now I mean you would

36:24

be you know you would be

36:27

a totally counter revolutionary and be

36:29

suicidal for me doing

36:31

stuff like this. Another

36:33

factor worth bearing in mind was that the same

36:35

thing was happening in other wealthy countries. Urban

36:38

guerrilla groups were forming and carry out armed

36:40

actions including the weather

36:42

underground in the US, the Red

36:44

Army faction in Germany, the Red

36:46

Brigades in Italy and so on.

36:48

The Red Army faction who were

36:50

Marxist-Leninist and who you know instinctively

36:53

I felt we

36:55

would have felt unsympathetic to this

36:57

notion of taking state action and

36:59

even if you could take state

37:01

power but the more I

37:03

understand of post-war German history

37:05

the more I can understand

37:08

their where they came from

37:10

actually. To know that you

37:12

know large numbers

37:14

of ex-nazis one thing, the universities

37:16

of bureaucracy. I feel much more

37:19

I would have felt very unsympathetic

37:21

at the time but more recently

37:23

I feel more sympathetic. As

37:27

John mentions most of these other groups were

37:29

very different politically speaking from the anger brigade

37:32

as most of them had some

37:34

form of status socialist ideology which

37:36

saw them wanting to establish socialism

37:38

or communism through the seizure of

37:40

state power. In West Germany

37:42

not only were former card-carrying Nazis and war

37:44

criminals running universities but they were running large

37:47

parts of the country in all parts of

37:49

society from government to the legal system to

37:51

big business. We've got some books about the

37:53

RAF available with more info which we'll link

37:56

to in the show notes and

37:58

we're going to be talking more about the Red Army. brigades and

38:01

other armed groups in Italy in our

38:03

forthcoming miniseries on Italy in the 1960s

38:05

and 70s. While there were

38:08

also women involved in these other urban guerrilla

38:10

groups, proportionately there were more in the angry

38:12

brigade. Yes, it was

38:14

a gender balance group. It was a

38:16

gender balance movement. I think the women's

38:18

movement had a huge impact on

38:23

the development of a revolutionary politics that

38:25

was not Leninist. A huge impact.

38:27

I mean at the time, I think it

38:30

was still a really crucial text

38:32

called the tyranny of structuralism. By

38:34

Jo Freeman. By Jo Freeman. I

38:37

think it's still really important. And

38:39

she's writing at the moment when

38:41

there's a transition from women

38:45

in consciousness raising groups to

38:47

women as being politically active.

38:50

She talks about that transition in

38:52

terms of the comrades at the

38:55

end. You go, yes, it was

38:58

gender. It was the

39:00

right thing not to be having. And

39:02

then she talks about

39:07

how if you're then moving to activist

39:09

politics, you do have to then think

39:12

about structures. Otherwise you start to get

39:14

informal elites. As part

39:16

of its fight against patriarchy, the angry

39:18

brigade detonated a bomb under a BBC

39:20

broadcast lorry in the early hours of

39:22

the morning outside the Miss World contest

39:24

on the 20th of May 1970. Women's

39:27

protests also occurred inside and outside the

39:29

venue later that day, with women pelting

39:31

the host, comedian Bob Hope, with flower

39:34

bombs and rotten fruit. While

39:36

the protests received widespread media coverage,

39:38

the bombing didn't. Two weeks

39:40

later, machinegun the Spanish

39:42

embassy in solidarity with six Basque

39:44

nationalists had been on trial in

39:46

another action which went unreported. And

39:49

then in December 1970 came the

39:51

first clue to what was happening. A

39:54

communique was sent to the international times

39:57

claiming the bomb attacks. And

39:59

it was some angry brigade the first time

40:01

the words had been used. The

40:04

communique also claimed a machine gun attack

40:06

on the Spanish Embassy. Later the

40:08

gun, the 38th vireta, was

40:10

proved ballistically to be the same gun that

40:12

was used on the American Embassy three years

40:14

earlier. So here was

40:17

direct evidence of a link between the first

40:19

of May group and people now calling themselves

40:21

the angry brigade. Their

40:24

communique claimed that the media blackout with

40:26

the system quote, trying to hide the

40:28

fact of its vulnerability and

40:30

stating quote, we can make ourselves heard

40:32

in one way or another end quote.

40:35

Unlike many other revolutionaries who undertook armed

40:37

actions in the past, the anger brigade

40:39

were at least realistic in what they

40:41

thought the potential consequences of their actions

40:43

would be. Especially as in

40:45

the past, many took such

40:48

actions hoping that they would spark some

40:50

sort of mass uprising which basically never

40:52

actually happened. I don't think

40:54

that we were that pretentious to finish you

40:56

know this was in Fent-plury stuff that was

40:58

going to trigger anything.

41:01

I think it was, I mean you know I

41:03

suppose in a way it was a very old-fashioned,

41:06

you could say, a very old-fashioned notion

41:09

of justice. The

41:11

idea of making decisions that affect

41:13

other people without affecting themselves. I

41:15

thought that this was within the

41:17

context as I say within the

41:20

context of which I thought there

41:22

was going to be a

41:25

cabbages counter offensive at this

41:27

time. I thought that within

41:29

that context this

41:31

was important. The effective media

41:33

blackout of the anger brigade would end soon

41:35

after following a particularly daring

41:37

attack. On the rise

41:40

of January 12th 1971, two bonds exploded

41:42

outside the London home of Robert Carr

41:44

empty. Carr was

41:46

Edward Heath's employment minister and the man

41:48

responsible for the heated and after relations

41:50

bill which had passed into law earlier that

41:52

day. That's

42:15

it for part one. Our Patreon supporters

42:17

can listen to part two exclusively now on

42:19

the link below, and it will

42:21

be available to everyone else in the next couple of weeks. Patrons

42:24

also get access to an exclusive bonus episode

42:26

with more tape from our interview. It's

42:29

only support from you, our listeners, which

42:31

allows us to make these podcasts. So

42:33

if you appreciate our work, please do

42:35

think about joining us at patreon.com/working class

42:37

history, link in the show notes. In

42:40

return for your support, you get great benefits

42:42

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42:44

free episodes, bonus episodes, discounted

42:46

merch, and more. If you

42:49

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42:51

it, but do tell your friends about this podcast

42:53

and take a second to give us a five

42:56

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42:58

like. We've got a couple of great books about

43:00

the Angry Brigade as well as an excellent documentary

43:02

DVD available in our online store, link in

43:04

the show notes. We've also got John Barker's novel,

43:06

Futures, set in Thatcher's London. As

43:09

a listener to this podcast, you can get any of

43:11

these and anything else in the store 10%

43:13

off using the discount code

43:16

WCHPODCAST. As always, we've got

43:18

loads more info on the webpage for this

43:20

episode, link in the show notes. So this

43:22

includes things like sources, transcripts

43:25

eventually, as well as a Radical London

43:27

playlist John Barker put together for us, which

43:29

is a curated collection of tracks that

43:31

were popular in the scene at the

43:33

time in London's clubs and communes. John's

43:36

written other books too, like Bend the

43:38

Bars and Criminal Justice Acts. These are

43:40

all available on his website, theharrier.net, link

43:42

in the show notes. Thanks

43:45

once again to our Patreon supporters

43:47

for making this podcast possible. Special

43:49

thanks to Jameson D. Saltzman, Jazz

43:51

Hands and Fernando Lopez Ojeda. Our

43:54

theme tune is Bella Ciao. Thanks for

43:56

permission to use it from Dischi del Sole. You

43:59

can buy it or stream it. on the links in the show

44:01

notes. This episode was

44:03

edited by Tyler Hill. Thanks to

44:05

you for listening. Catch you next time.