RED RAG

Back Issues

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Established 1979
Free! Fortnightly! Fun!
(cover illustration)

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 June 27th (scan / txt); the next one is due out on July 11th.

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): why was the university Women's Group disbanded? how many homeless people froze to death on the streets of Reading last winter? how much does raising money for the Rape Crisis line justify compromising its political credentials? what did the end of the Falklands War to do the dollar rate and which royal event kept that off the front pages? was the CIA really behind the Labour Party's rejection of nuclear disarmament? why does Red Rag look so different? and how could Emma Goldman even think of dancing if she lived so long ago?