RED RAG

Back Issues
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Established 1979
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 (cover illustration)

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

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 1300. 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 in four years it had never sold a single copy.

In this issue (scan / txt): 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.