John Barker and The Angry Brigade on Working Class History Podcast

By Working Class History

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.

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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 – Available early for our patreon supporters
• Part 2: Later actions, the criminal investigation, the trials, and lessons – Available early for our patreon supporters
• Bonus episode: Prison activism, escape plans, and the winter of discontent – Available soon 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.

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