Back Issues

• Get the Rag to your inbox
• Red Rag

Established 1979
Free! Three weekly! Fun!

These are the back issues of Red Rag. They'll be posted here every two weeks on or around the anniversary of their original publication. We're currently reissuing 1982; the latest issue is dated September 5th (scan / txt); the next one is due out on the 19th.

Red Rag, or Reading's only newspaper, had a noble tradition of misspelling, mixed metaphors, wrong facts, confused political judgements and a dedicated readership by now of over 800. It aimed to publicise and encourage a wide spectrum of subversion and culture in Reading; it kept people in touch with an events diary which spanned the activities of groups as diverse as organic gardeners and anarchists, anti-nuclear activists and civic planners, wild-eyed liberals and woolly communists; it contained news and views and details of things to do in and around Reading which the local press couldn't or wouldn't touch. And it was free.

In this issue (scan / txt): health workers plan a national day of action over pay; the Tebbit Act plans to end the closed shop and makes it illegal for unions to take seconday industrial action; Courage deny that there's any danger to the public from the asbestos dust drifting out of the old Brewery site; Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp is one year old; eviction of the Rainbow Peace Settlement outside the Green Gate is imminent; rumour has it that the first 70 cruise missiles have already arrived; Burghfield Peace Camp is low on support and will probably close later this month; Reading Police take a softly, softly approach at the Reading Festival (and so arrest 100 people, mainly for cannabis offenses); they have failed to get all their vehicles painted regulation colours and we print the registrations of some Ford Cortinas.