Back Issues

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• Red Rag

Established 1979
Free! Fortnightly! Fun!

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 October 17th (scan / txt); the next one is due out on October 31st.

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 1000 copies. 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): police harass the Rainbow Camp at Greenham; how "Spies for Peace" infiltrated the 1963 Aldermaston march; we follow a nuclear convoy down the M4; a 25-foot peace symbol made up of daffodils is planted on the motorway embankment (not at the same time); the Militant faction of the Labour Party is short-sighted (can a legislated minimum wage help remove poverty?); the Militant faction is short-sighted (it won't admit that Labour can never be the Party of the Working Class); and Diogenes visits the Borough Council.