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 (usually) two weeks on or around the anniversary of their original publication. We're currently reissuing 1984; the latest issue is dated May 13th (scan / txt); the next one is due out on the 27th.

Red Rag, or Reading's only newspaper, had a noble tradition of misspelling, mixed metaphors, wrong facts, confused political judgements and a readership of 4000. It printed pretty well everything it got sent ("unless the Collective judged it racist, sexist, right wing, supportive of oppressive religions, or boring"). It aimed to provide a decent alternative coverage of local news and issues from a radical non-aligned position; to promote subversive and creative initiatives; to provide a forum for unorthodox views; to allow some sort of co-existence between a huge variety of interests. And in four and a half years it had never sold a single copy.

In this issue (scan / txt): Rumours of soldiers in police uniform at the miners' picket lines just won't lie down; Acorn raise money for their Right to Read defence with an Alternative Cabaret benefit; Reading Festival might be able to run at the Richfield Avenue site one last time; the Famous Going Out Guide is promoted from poorly typed with a faded ribbon to handwritten (does nobody care for the OCR correctors of future years?); and - buried in what for the Rag is an unusual plea for restraint in animal liberation - we find our first mention of a new disease: AIDS.