Red Rag - Back Issues - 1983

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This page lists the 1983 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.


  • January 9th

(scan / txt / intro)
44 Greenham Common peace campaigners are arrested for unlawfully trespassing on the airbase by scaling the main security fence with ladders bought from Reading Woolworths, occupying a high security area and disrupting and inconveniencing people working there. Several hundred people blockade USAF Upper Heyford the other side of Oxford, no arrests are reported. The Home Office has removed the right of local resident Shenaz Sheikh to indefinite stay in Britain and is insisting that she be sent back to Pakistan; the squatters at 5 Dover St have been evicted and have since taken up residence in number 8 over the road; and the Rag considers whether it should fund its printing bills by accepting paid advertisements.

(front cover)
  • Minutes of collective meeting January 16th (scan / txt)
  • January 23rd

(scan / txt / intro)
Shehnaz Sheikh faces immediate deportation. Even local Tory MP Tony Durant is opposed; we interview Shehnaz and explain the background to the campaign to keep her here. The "Special Claim Group" of the DHSS descends on Reading looking for scroungers and fiddlers; the Brock Barracks night shelter is looking for volunteers; Diogenes visits the Borough Council - there's a certain fascination to it but he's not sure he'll bother in future; John Punter's "Walking Tour of Central Reading" stimulates comment and discussion about development in central Reading.

We can't afford our printing bills. This issue was partly free because we had some paper, ink and stencils left from the days when the Rag was always this hard to read. When we go back to litho printing we'll keep it down to 4 or 8 pages. Recent content has been dire and from now on the Collective will edit without compunction.

If the Home Office make it easy for me, they'll have to make it easy for everyone else - that's why they don't want to let me stay.

(front cover)
  • February 6th

(scan / txt / intro)
The grim reality of a Nation at War with Terrorism finally strikes when the army sends a brave little robot into the Unemployment Benefit Office to investigate two bottles of milk inside a brown paper bag; Labour Party candidates for the forthcoming fiasco next election day are reluctant to answer questions about policy (but if you wanted to know the answers to specific problems you could buy the book on your way out); a claimant tells the police "if you arrest me at least I will get a meal which is more than the DHSS are allowing me"; and readers aren't taking the Red Rag questionnaire seriously enough.

(front cover)
  • Minutes of collective meeting February 13th (scan / txt)
  • February 20th

(scan / txt / intro)
Women from Greenham appear in court charged with breach of the peace; the SWP turn up to sell their newspaper and are met with derision as they support neither Non-violent Direct Action nor the women-only camp. CND plans a 40,000 strong human chain at Easter, linking USAF Greenham, AWRE Aldermaston, and ROF Burghfield; a Peace Camp opens at Upper Heyford in nearby Oxfordshire; the pregnancy testing service at the Women's Centre needs more volunteers; we analyse the six parties which contested last year's elections in El Salvador; and the Anarchists consider the benefits of a nuclear holocaust.

(front cover)
  • March 6th

(scan / txt / intro)
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.

(front cover)
  • Minutes of collective meeting March 13th (scan / txt)
  • March 20th

(scan / txt / intro)
Final preparations for the blockades of ROF Burghfield and USAF Greenham Common, and the 14 mile human chain between them; Tory run Berks County Council axes its provision of free nursery places for the under-fives; Spectacular Times publishes "More of the Shame": a funny, niggling little tool for breaking down those atrociously solid barriers that surround us; how to plant those marijuana seeds; and just what did the Anarchists mean by "the benefits of a nuclear holocaust"?

(front cover)
  • April 3rd

(scan / txt / intro)
Scumbag landlord Vernon Paxford threatens to sue the Rag and we interview one of his tenants; the punks squatting the old cinema on Cemetery Junction weren't on the lookout for better table tennis facilities; the Evening Post lends a hand; and someone's been flyposting "cancelled" notices on circus posters.

(front cover)
  • April 17th

(scan / txt / intro)
On 6th April 1983, four plain clothes Drugs Squad officers entered Acorn Bookshop, bearing a warrant to search the premises and seize books under the Obscene Publications Act. They went off with an idiosyncratic choice of books, including: "Junky" by Burroughs, "Doors of Perception" by Huxley, "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Wolfe, "The Dictionary of Drugs", "Hell's Angels" (a Penguin) and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", both by Hunter S. Thompson. All of these can be found in most paperback bookshops. "Opium, Diary of a Cure" by Cocteau was taken, as were "Growing Natural Tobacco", "Tomorrow"s Epidemic" (a War on Want publication on tobacco and the Third World) and "The Coffee Lover's Handbook". The Director of Public Prosecutions will now examine them to see what is "deemed obscene".

And in other news: Thursday May 5th is Democracy Day - don't walk off with the pencil.

(front cover)
  • May 1st

(scan / txt / intro)
Non-violent direct action isn't always that easy: lessons are learned from the blockade of Burghfield earlier this year. May l4th-21st will be a week for women all over the country to show how they feel about porn: local events will include a picket of sex shops, workshops and a Reclaim the Night march. Reading Health Watch blows the whistle on cuts in local services; New Games are played; the Anarcho-Christians have a point; why jokes about shoplifting may have to be funded by the Kremlin; and the Legalise Cannabis Campaign gives a lesson in repotting and general plant care.

Should you run off with the pencil? Does every vote cast for the Ecology Party rather than Labour diminish the chances of Reading joining the 192 local authorities which already have declared themselves nuclear free? Tune in next time to see who won.

(front cover)
  • May 15th

(scan / txt / intro)
The Management of the Centre for the Unemployed underestimates the intelligence of the Centre's users and takes a red pencil to the first issue of "The Scrounger". In a period of only ten weeks, 120 homeless people stayed at Reading's Emergency Accommodation Project; Anti-Porn week has become a fortnight due to the Cup Final; the Conservation Society considers alternative energy sources; details of the neo-Kropotkinist kabouters are available from Box 10, Acorn in exchange for an s.a.e.; and, in confidence, would research group @ please contact Red Rag.

Free food - of course, what the Centre for the Unemployed should be doing is running courses on shoplifting. We need to learn about the law, how to deal with the police, how to spot the store detectives, lessons in sprinting and how to eat the evidence. Perhaps we could get an MSC grant for building a mock-up of a supermarket?

(front cover)
  • May 29th

(scan / txt / intro)
The WEA issues a pamphlet on Reading's local economy (So what's all this about unemployment? Why is there no discussion of money? Or of wages at all, or of the quality, as opposed to the quantity, of jobs in the area? Or of whether most jobs are worth doing at all - we are told there are "moral implications" in the fact that 10% of the working population is employed by defence companies - so why should it just be assumed that anyone without a job ought to have one?). A four day blockade is planned at USAF Upper Heyford; someone wants to build a road across the "Coal" and a plant survey is proposed; the Family Planning Clinic hesitates before issuing cervical caps to the unemployed; Workers Power gets uppity, twice; and David Owen is rendered speechless by a custard pie.

(front cover)
  • June 12th

(scan / txt / intro)
Following two years of uncertainty, a long public campaign, and a Lords ruling shifting burden of proof in immigration cases onto the Home Office, local resident Shehnaz Sheikh finally wins the right to stay in the United Kingdom. Two days before a general election, only cynics could think of linking the HO's decision to the large Asian community in conservative MP Tony Durant's constituency. Also: a personal account of getting arrested at the Non Violent Direct Action at USAF Upper Heyford; Acorn Bookshop is hiring; and planning has started for "Reading Between the Lines", a combined guide & directory to Reading hopefully to appear this autumn (but which won't be appearing on this website unless someone else wants to take on the work).

(front cover)
  • June 26th

(scan / txt / intro)
The Scrounger, published by users of the Centre for the Jobfree, can no longer be published at the Centre for the Jobfree; we print its second (and final) issue, featuring a look at the Specialist Claims Control Unit and its unsavoury reputation for intimidating innocent claimants, particularly women. Reading Health Watch calls on Health Service workers to "blow the whistle" and force the Health Authority's spending cuts and their effects into public debate. The only Gay-Man-in-Drag at Glastonbury (14 pounds for 3 days) and Stonehenge reports back on hyper-commercialism and spectacular recuperation. At the Council Committee meetings (they didn't have railings along the Kennet when I was a kid, you just fell in) we come to the help of the Liberal councillor who's having problems with the defective recipe in the last Rag; they're still sewing bags in Reading Gaol, but not for the Royal Mail; and the students are revolting.

(front cover)
  • July 10th

(scan / txt / intro)
CONTAINING on page 3 DIVERS
EVENTS
and a Guide to ſundry forthcoming
OCCASIONS
of PUBLIC ENJOYMENT on PAGE 4
and also a
NARRATION
upon Events lately transpiring upon the
Common at Greenham, BERKS, AND A
DISCOURSE
concerning Horrid Engines of WAR on page 6

(front cover)
  • Minutes of collective meeting July 18th (scan / txt)
  • July 24th

(scan / txt / intro)
The Tories claim that National Health services are not being "cut" so much as "rationalized"; the Arms Race pays a visit; the "Walk for Life" from Faslane nuclear submarine base to Greenham Common reaches Reading; and during the Parliamentary debate which legalized CB radio a Home Office spokesman said, "The government must realise the dangers involved in allowing large numbers of people to communicate with each other". Indeed.

Talking of danger, the 1983 edition of Red Rag's unpronounceable guide "Reading Between the Lines" is due out with the next Rag. But it won't be on this website unless somebody other than me wants to do the work of putting it there. Get in touch.

(front cover)
  • August 14th

(scan / txt / intro)
Red Rag interviews a recent prisoner who describes the drab and pointless life that goes on in Reading's most infamous institution.

Once you're in, you meet a lot of people there, and every one of them's done something wrong. If you go around and talk to people, you just learn so much about crime! Not the YPs, there's nothing to learn from that lot, all they do is go out, steal a car, ride it about and then dump it. But people that are in for smuggling drugs, say. You can learn how to do it, why they got caught. Or burglaries, you can learn so much about burgling a house. There's loads of ways of doing it! To the people that are putting you in there, it's not worth putting you in there. If they're trying to make you better. It just goes to prove that they don't give a fuck about anybody apart from themselves. "We don't want him on the street, so we'll put him away." That's the way it works, I suppose. They're just a bunch of arseholes.

(front cover)
  • September 4th

(scan / txt / intro)
One of the Greenham women goes home - rather than into hospital - to have her baby and the authorities respond with a court order removing him to "a place of safety". Margaret Small and her children, only black family on the street, are hounded out of their house and then declared intentionally homeless. The managers of multinationals make daily business decisions which have more impact on where people live; what work, if any, they will do; what they will eat, drink, and wear; what sort of knowledge schools and universities will encourage: and what kind of world their children will inherit; than those of the governments of the countries in which they live. But at least we know whether or not Arthur Scargill walks on water.

(front cover)
  • September 18th

(scan / txt / intro)
Late September can only mean two things: it's illegal eviction time again - so East Reading landlords can bump the rent - and the Soviet cannabis harvest was as magnificent as ever. And the reason why this issue of the Rag is so small is that nobody seems to have felt like writing anything much. So send in your news, reviews and comments for next time.

(front cover)
  • October 2nd

(scan / txt / intro)
Secretary of State for the Environment Patrick Jenkin is dismantling the planning system (Heseltine merely toyed with the idea); looking around Reading it's hard to believe that anyone ever has said no to anything. The police drag "Stop the City" protestors out of the sanctuary of St. Paul's Cathedral; two days before the demo they raided the squat at the mill in Burghfield searching for "subversive literature"; there's talk of setting up a permanent Community Arts Centre, and also a Plantaholics Anonymous Group; and Nick has been doing the Events column for most of a year and would like to stop.

(front cover)
  • Minutes of collective meeting October 9th (scan / txt)
  • October 16th

(scan / txt / intro)
The Council's Housing Committee decides to sell all 105 Council houses which are now being built; its waiting list is getting shorter but only because they've redefined who can be on it. In West Germany a teacher tells his pupils that during the War, no Jews had been killed and Americans had faked photographs of atrocities; another teacher complains about this in a letter to the press; guess which one loses his job. The squat at Burghfield Mill declares independence from the UK while wrestling with the problem of how to haul Brian's coach out of the river; the County Council give themselves planning permission for a 375,000 sq ft office development in the town centre and then sell the site for £12 million; and we print the rules for Non-eliminatory-musical-chairs.

I stood on the outside of the fence looking in (or was I looking out?) It was a green fence, topped with a frill of barbed wire and decorated in places with child's clothing, torn scarves and faded, sodden photographs of smiling strangers.

(front cover)
  • October 30th

(scan / txt / intro)
Holocaust denier David Irving is invited to speak at the University and demonstrators try to disrupt the lecture: justifiable outrage or playing into the wrong hands with the publicity they generate? We argue it both ways. To the cry of "Paki bastards" a passing rugby team demolishes one of the food shops on Cemetery Junction and the police keep a low profile. The council makes certain it won't build any more houses by selling off all its undeveloped land; the Events listing accidentally calls the Centre for the Jobfree by another name; and our guide to alternative Reading, "Reading Between the Lines", really will appear with the next issue.

(front cover)
  • November 13th

(scan / txt / intro)
The Bad Days will end. But there's little evidence of that in this issue. The Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, including powers to detain without charge for as long as 36 hours, receives its second reading in the Commons; America invades Grenada; the Borough Council is losing thousands of pounds on each house sale; Red Rag is in debt; the surprise soup at Veggie Dining is no longer a surprise; and the heating's off at Acorn.

What we must aim at is to fail clearly each time, over and over.

(front cover)
  • November 27th

(scan / txt / intro)
The Cruise missiles are about to arrive: Berkshire is knee-deep in candlelit vigils and the Christchurch Road sewers have been strengthened so that Cruise transporters can use the University campus as a launch site. A member of the English Collective of Prostitutes speaks at the Jobfree Centre's "Does Unemployment Make You Sick?" conference, pointing out the connection between unemployment and prostitution, and the WEA threaten to withdraw their funding; two thirds of the Tories on the Borough Council decline to make an entry in the Register of Interests; Thames Valley Police are still cruising about in unmarked vehicles such as AWL2l6Y; Vaneigem's "Revolution of Everyday Life" is reprinted; and the Rag apologises to the owners of the phone number mistakenly associated with the Women's Liberation Group. Apparently they've been deluged with calls.

People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.

(front cover)
  • December 11th

(scan / txt / intro)
Peace campers at Greenham break into the base and stay there for over three hours: they paint the runway red, wander around, sit on the silos, and when finally they get cold and tired they ask the RAF to left them out again. Minister of War Heseltine pays us a visit; it's the first time in a decade that students at Reading have been arrested for this sort of thing. Sand dancing comes to Reading; feet have politics; and Red Rag should get more personal. But if you're worried about 1984 the new Red Rag calendar will brighten up your year. Remarkable! Magnificent! Amazing! And with George Orwell on the cover it's a bargain at 80p.

(front cover)