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Free! Fortnightly! Fun!
This page lists the 1986 back issues of Red Rag. Each issue is
available in two forms:
- scan - choose this to see exactly what each issue looked like, but
be prepared for 20MB downloads
- txt - just the text - choose this for a much faster download or if
you want to copy the text into any other form
You can also link from here to the introduction page for each issue.
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In its manual for use against the government of Nicaragua, the CIA
prints a guide to making Molotov cocktails; the New Statesman copies
their graphic and later Red Rag reprints it. But this is a quiet news
week in Reading and both the Post and Chronic lead with "Fury at DIY
Bomb Guide", failing to mention any CIA connection and taunting local
police to find a charge to throw at the Rag. Far from being a week of
spontaneity and creativity, Abiezer's solstice celebrated apathy and
distorted anarchy; girls who take a taxi home are "asking for it";
after a 5 year campaign by Friends of the Earth the Department of
Transport relents on its plans to cut the M40 through Otmoor; and
they're shooting the pigeons in Reading.
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- Minutes of collective meeting January 19th
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Rag Doll is to be demolished to make way for over 60,000 square feet
of office space; Reading's other newspapers are every bit as local
as the local branch of McDonalds; the Diggers walk of 1986 is headed
for Molesworth; with your own cardboard cutout cat you could be a Pope
for life; Moscow is late with its gold shipment; and Here and Now
become There and Then.
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Irma and Patrick are relatively strict Rastafari and believe in the
minimum of contact with white society; they and their children are
pushed from one damp bed and breakfast joint to another; their baby
gets sick and stops eating; Patrick goes to the Registry Office to
register the birth and so make it possible for an NHS doctor to treat
the child; he is refused help because he doesn't have a doctor's
certificate for the baby; the child dies and, both convicted of
neglect, Irma is put on two years probation while Patrick is sent to
Fairmile Hospital for unlimited psychiatric treatment. 6,000 workers
of Rupert Murdoch's press empire strike, are sacked and replaced by
"scabs at Wapping"; the Conspiracy aims to relieve monotony of
performing arts in Reading and have fun doing it; the myth perpetuated
by state, nihilists and some Red Rag contributors, of anarchism as
implicitly violent must be broken down; and you can hack into the
Shire Hall mainframe just by walking into Reading library: no password
required.
New technology is simply a cover, workers'
organisation is Murdoch's real target.
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With all-party support the Drug Trafficking Offences Bill defines
sharing illegal drugs as "possession with intent" and compels judges
to confiscate all property held by the defendant within the last five
years; Nicholas Fairburn MP hopes that the Obscene Publications Bill
will prevent people from watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest";
the private shop on Southampton Street is picketed for Valentine's
Day; staff at the Chronic have been reduced to the wretched (and
illegal) practice of making up artwork by photocopying pages of the
Letraset catalogue and cutting out the required letters; there could
be more confusion; and Oxfam stops banking at Barclays.
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- Minutes of collective meeting March 2nd
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An anniversary squat of the old Unemployment Benefit Offices in South
Street provides accommodation and workshop space for International
Womens Day, in advance of pending demolition to make way for 16 French
cottage lookalike sheds. Weekly Saturday night mass pickets of
Murdoch's Wapping plant (bring a packed lunch & warm woollens);
whether or not to tell the Social that you're co-habitating; all that
is dippy in the libertarian-chic milieu; and news that the Rag might
fold due to lack of involvement and funding which is greeted
enthusiastically by the Chief Constable of Thames Valley
Police. "These people have been getting up my nose for years with all
their pranks. Now that they could be going, we can look forward to
running things as we really want to."
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- Minutes of collective meeting March 16th
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The Student's Union at Bulmershe is instructed to totally obliterate
the phrase "Nelson Mandela Building" from its headed notepaper,
failing which disciplinary action will follow including suspension of
the Union's two sabbatical officers; there's something of a link
between dramatic increases in the level of Council rent and a 277%
rise in arrears; the South-East Women's Conference proved that women
really are doing things for themselves; someone's conspiring in
Reading; the Stonehenge 86 Campaign are to meet with the Chief
Constable; and there are now several different anti-statist or
anti-capitalist groups in the locality: Reading DAM, Revolutionaries
of Everyday Life, Industrial Myths of the Near Future, Discordians,
Bracknell Anarchists, Thames Valley Anarchists and the Airstrip One
Liberation Army. Some of these groups do not exist and never have. But
most of them appear to have contributed their opinions to Red Rag
recently.
Was this South Africa or Chile? Neither, it was
Wapping, Britain 1986! 6,000 print workers sacked. Union monies
sequestrated, riot police attacking peaceful demonstrators, all to
preserve the freedom of that British press, i.e. the freedom of the
likes of Murdoch, Matthews and Maxwell who control 80% of the British
newspapers to print their lies and filth and accumulate their
millions.
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The unemployed are exhorted to go on strike by withholding their
availability for work. To have any impact this symbolic gesture must
be carried out en masse. Once 4.5 million unemployed people have
withdrawn their availability for work the government will have no
choice but to continue paying the unemployed and so this single act of
defiance is transformed into a concrete power held in the hands of the
unemployed. No longer will we fear the government and its
oppression. The unemployed will become aware of their own
strength. From here it will be a short route to a realistic dole
payment.
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Mass publicity of events at Greenham has died considerably over the
last year; with the dwindling of coverage, numbers of women at
Greenham have dwindled; the women are tired and some need a break and
to get away for a while, but they won't leave; Greenham cannot be left
unattended; those that remain have the same determination as when the
camp was first set up; there is a strong spirit between the women, a
closeness that cannot be explained. Back in Reading the Conspiracy
is on the move; in Westminster the Fowler review of
the Social Security is set to drastically reduce the resources of
people claiming all sorts of benefits - anything fron disabled
peoples' benefits to single payments.
As I left I asked what wanted bringing next time
I came. The reply wasn't food or clothing but "more
women".
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- Minutes of collective meeting April 27th
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It's May Day (well, give or take) and the International Proletariat
throws back its collective shoulders and bursts into song; Thames
Valley Anarchists have issued their latest pamphlet "Vote labour and
still die horribly" in time for next week's elections; and this copy
of the Rag is printed with special radioactive ink, which changes
colour to red in the presence of gamma rays. In the event of a
positive result, contact 0800 100 100 (freephone).
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A US flag is burned at a demonstration in London against the bombings
in Libya. A straight looking American appears out of the blue with a
couple of newsmen, brushes his hair for the camera and gives the
one-liner: "these people say they are against terrorism, but what are
they doing about it?". Labour is reluctant to oppose the Housing &
Planning Bill which will give local authorities like Reading Borough
Council the legal right to sell entire estates to private developers
and evict all tenants who refuse to move; the period for which people
are not allowed to claim unemployment benefit if they have left a job
voluntarily (for example, in response to sexual harassment or racist
abuse) is raised to 13 weeks; customs officials have seized books
which they claim are "indecent or obscene" from Gay's the Word
bookshop; the Real Time Collective is busy; Victorians are making a
comeback; and Labour's new policies offer so much more than revolution
could ever hope to achieve.
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The TUC has connived at a national disaster - the transformation of
the Manpower Services Commission, once a far sighted planning team
meant to align the labour market to the real needs of the people and
the nation, into a pliant pusillanimous tool of Thatcherism. Feminist
Book Fortnight comes to Reading; there are video screenings and
workshops everywhere you look; the Rag is skint again; and there's a
question mark over the next issue as it hasn't even got a co-ordinator
yet. Why not?
If the media of this country had stopped puking
up horror stories about the "gay plague" several years ago when AIDS
first became "news" then none of this need have
happened.
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- Minutes of collective meeting June 8th
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Red Rag is once again skint; the Rag needs a new worker to take over
the post of distribution co-ordinator; if your Red Rag was late this
week it was because at 3.30 on Saturday no one had volunteered to
coordinate Sunday folding & distribution; this has been a ludicrously
short and vague Going Out because we cannot afford to print anything
larger. Get off your arses and support the Rag - or isn't it worth the
effort?
Perhaps you could suggest a new method of raising
money. So far we've only come up with blackmail, kidnap, bank robbery
and holding a jumble sale.
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It's Royal Wedding time, and the Rag pushes out the red carpet. It's
also the 50th anniversary of the International Brigades: ten people
from Reading volunteered - including the first British woman volunteer
in Spain - and three of them were killed; surviving members of the
Reading contingent are guests of honour at a memorial gathering in the
Civic Centre. At Greenham Common Women's peace camp the Blue Gate
nightwatch has plenty of vacancies; there's eating, drinking and
dancing at Red Gate. And the next issue of Red Rag doesn't have a
co-ordinator.
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- Minutes of collective meeting July 6th
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- Minutes of collective meeting August 3rd
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- Minutes of collective meeting August 14th
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After a long summer break, without enough people to write and produce
the paper, or enough money to pay its bills, Red Rag celebrates its
seventh birthday. Starting next issue, it will cut its print run back
from 1600 to 300, lose most of its outlets, stop delivering
door-to-door, and charge 20p per copy. "Despite much reluctance and
resistance," it says here.
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Reading DHSS is on a shortlist of offices onto which a new antifraud
squad - the Board and Lodging Control Section - is to be unleashed;
women do two thirds of the world's work for 5 percent of its income
and 1 percent of its assents; the World Court orders the Reagan
administration to cease its activities in Nicaragua and pay
reparations; Reading Borough Council appoints an AIDS Liaison Officer;
the Acorn Bookshop is ten years old and still growing; and the SWP
debate "Labour and Socialism: the way forward?" with LPYS is to be
challenged by brave anarchists defacing the posters.
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Three women are raped at Molesworth Peace Camp. The rapes are hushed
up and the victims find they have to work hard to get any recognition
or support.
They were soon referring to it as a
"misunderstanding". Campers excused the event by suggesting that she
had "said no when she really meant yes" and that she really liked the
man anyway.
At the end of the two weeks she was having to
justify, to herself and to them, why she had ever told them. She left
determined to tell no one else - the camp had silenced
her.
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One of the men accused of killing Gurdip Kaur - her husband Gurbax
Singh - is set free and campaigners plan a private prosecution;
Reading's Labour-controlled Council is failing to deal with the
continuing property development cancer smiting the town; the leak
behind the Chronicle's sensationalised "Black Mum Slams Afro-Caribbean
Education Scheme" came from a Community Education Officer whose job is
to help Afro-Caribbean and Asian children with problems at school; the
Thames Valley Police Consultative Committee hold a public meeting but
no members of the public show up; Veggie Dining is back (again); in
spite of warnings from Red Rag, the Berkshire County Council still
hasn't fixed its computer security; John H will no longer be spending
Saturday night pub times printing the Rag; and is anyone interested in
helping to set up a housing co-op?
Reading is shaped, not inappropriately, like the
symbol for radiation hazards. The gaps are the floodplains of the
Thames and Kennet, suitable only for sewage farms, rock festivals,
speedway and gravel extraction.
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Secretary of State for Education Ken Baker visits Bulmershe College
but doesn't care to meet with any of the students; said students then
arrange a protest against Tory education cuts and the proposed
introduction of a mixed grants/loan system which would leave them with
massive debts at the end of their courses; four students are picked
out of the crowd and arrested; and Reading's less objective papers
shout "non-student activists", "Anarchists" and "riot". Campaigns in
Reading and London demand justice in the cases of Gurdip Kaur and
Balwant Kaur, both murdered by their husbands; the 25th anniversary of
the Sandinistas is celebrated; why not to drive to an action in a
vehicle with a faulty tyre and no tax disk; and if Jim, Heather and
Shea P. - last heard of somewhere in Scotland - happen to be reading
this then George needs to contact you about the battle of the
beanfield.
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The Public Order Bill is passed: the police will have the power to ban
or to determine the size, time and place of any demonstration; it will
be an offence to organise a demonstration without police approval, and
simply being a participant on an illegal march could mean a fine of up
to £400. DHSS payments to Supplementary Benefit claimants for extra
fuel costs in periods of severe weather are the latest area of the
Welfare State to be "streamlined" by a government out to get the poor,
the elderly, and the unemployed. BANC stop funding the Greenham Food
Van; a free festival is planned near Reading next summer; the council
did consult the public about the improvement and expansion of the
Museum and Art Gallery but with loaded and inadequate information; and
Reading is still Between the Lines.
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Two "Claimants Advisers" set up shop at the Wessex House UBO, tasked
with forcing selected unemployed people to sign off; but if you're
signing on and your home has central heating (including night storage
heaters) then you're entitled to additional benefits; come along to
the New Year's direct action at USAF Upper Heyford; when the present
geriatric patients are transferred from Prospect Park Hospital in
Autumn 1987, the site will be closed and sold off; the likes of CND
(Changing Nothing for Decades) have lead people into a trap by
convincing them that "nuclear disarmament" in isolation is the issue;
there's a moral issue in upholding the law; and Dumbo receives its TV
premiere.
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