Back Issues

• Get the Rag to your inbox
• Red Rag

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 1983; the latest issue is dated March 6th (scan / txt); the next one is due out on the 20th.

Red Rag, or Reading's only newspaper, had a noble tradition of misspelling, mixed metaphors, wrong facts, confused political judgements and a print run by now of over 1000. It printed pretty well everything it got sent ("unless the Collective judged it racist, sexist, right wing, or supportive of oppressive religions"). 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 it was free.

In this issue (scan / txt): the quality of "temporary" council housing, conditions in local Bed and Breakfast accommodation, and the strong-arm tactics of local scumbag landlord Vernon Paxford. Ten people arrested for threatening behaviour at the Falklands War Victory Parade are acquitted but the five accused of criminal damage to a piece of fencing at Greenham Common are not so lucky; Vegetarian Dining is up and running: £2 for a 3-course meal and the cooks eat for free; part two of the article on El Salvador deals with the military situation, US intervention and Vietnamisation; a review of "On Terrorism and the State" by situationist Gianfranco Sanginetti; and of the 42 people who replied to the Legalise Cannabis Campaign's survey last November, 32 were stoned at the time, ten of these notably so given the state of their replies.