Back Issues

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Established 1979
Free! Fortnightly! 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 October 3rd (scan / txt); the next one is due out on October 17th.

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): The Peace Camps at Greenham are evicted and Acorn Bookshop's telephone goes dead for 48 hours: solidarity or sabotage? The Labour Party Conference is stirred into responding (to the former) and overwhelmingly passes a comprehensive motion on unilateral disarmament and nuclear free zones. Local participation in the NHS day of action was unimpressive; candidates for the Conservatives' cuts in Social Services are spelled out in detail; temperance, poetry, urban planning and pirate radio. And Red Rag's 4-page pullout guide to Reading "as distributed at the University on Thursday" (scan / txt).