Project captures voices from hyperlocal newspapers 1968-1988

By Phil Chamberlain & Professor Steve Poole

The period from the mid-60s to the mid-80s was a time of seismic change in British politics from a rising radicalism in a postwar generation to Thatcherism – a period that starts with mid-term Harold Wilson and ends with Margaret Thatcher still in power. It covers opposition to the Vietnam war, student activism, the rise of feminism and anti-racism, a surge and decline in trade union strength, the miners’ strike and the emergence of a host of radical community and single-issue groups focused on everything from housing rights to domestic violence.

While these events were all covered extensively in the mainstream media – often with a scowl on its corporate face – there emerged a vibrant host of small radical publications, driven by a desire to provide for alternative voices. Journalists, activists, trade union members and community-minded residents launched small, often roughly produced, publications that sparked with life. Some quickly closed while others grew and flourished. Their names conjure up a sense of adventure, defiance and humour – from the Cleck Hooter in Yorkshire and the Pack-O-Lies in Liverpool to the Free Winged Eagle in Orkney. And the West of England played a full part with Bristol Voice, Bath Spark, the North Devon Snail, the wonderfully named Sheep Worrying (Somerset) and others. Academics at the University of the West of England are trying to ensure that this part of British history and culture is not lost. Most of these publications have no archive and their contribution is in danger of being forgotten.

Journalist Phil Chamberlain and Professor Steve Poole are looking at the history and impact of local alternative radical media in the period 1968 to 1988 and its impact on regional and local communities. Phil was formerly head of the School of Film and Journalism at the University of the West of England. Steve, who edited Bath Spark in the 70s and 80s, is Professor of History and Heritage at the UWE.

The project – Recovering the Regional Radical Press in Britain, 1968-1988 (RRRP) – is rediscovering lost papers and reconnecting with the people who produced them. Those who worked on or with these publications are invited to share their memories. The project wants to know when and where the paper existed, who was involved, what it covered and what happened to the publication and the people.

Phil Chamberlain presented the project to journalists at the September meeting of the South-West England NUJ. He described the aim as being to capture the range and vibrancy of a golden period of radical publication that emerged from an explosion of radical thought combined with the availability of spare capacity on offset litho printing presses. So far the project has logged the existence of more than 220 local titles around the country.

Phil said: “It’s an area which was incredibly vibrant for a short space of time, and the nature of memory is that if it’s not written down, then we don’t remember it.”

“We have this burgeoning and really diverse set of papers and they broke some really big stories.”

Leeds Other Paper was so successful that it managed to pay its own journalists for a time. The Liverpool Free Press investigated and published stories about corruption in local politics. The Rochdale Free Press (RAP) investigated reports of sexual abuse by Cyril Smith. In some cases Phil said, mainstream media were content to let the small radical papers risk libel writs and then follow up when they considered it safe to do so.

Many hyperlocal papers grew out of single issue campaigns, such as the squatting movement, and were designed to encouraging people to act. But they were not all about politics – community news and listings filling an information gap in the pre Internet days. One paper ran a regular feature on the best fish and chip shops. Phil said: “To pigeon-hole them all being of one thing would be wrong – they were actually quite diverse. The breadth is really interesting and I think it is that bottom-up vibrancy which is really what we want to capture and chart and make sure we could recall.”

Bristol Voice was founded by a group of activists in the 1970s, initially focusing on the sell-off of council housing. The paper appeared monthly, had a cover price of 15p and was produced and distributed on a voluntary basis. It had links with the publishing co-operative Bristol Broadsides.

Greg Wilkinson, a former Reuters correspondent who edited the Swindon Free Press, told the project: “Maybe it was important for people to have their own voice, rather than be spoken for, or commented or editorialised about.”

The Bath Spark lasted almost five years, shared office with a print shop, a bookshop and a community hall. Steve Poole, who was himself editor in the 1970s and 80s, describes it as “broadly left but locally-focussed … somewhere between countercultural lifestyle mag and agitational political newspaper.” It tackled issues arising out of the gentrification of Bath and included news from local campaigns and anti-racist groups alongside music listings.

The Spark folded after five years (the offices now a pizza parlour). Steve Poole says: “Some founding members moved away. Some became busy with other things. There were mounting disagreements over content, design and direction … The radical cultural politics that brought people together in a community of creative self-help at Longacre evaporated too. Will we ever get it back?”

In part the radical papers were (unintentionally) state funded with some council providing grants to help bring information to communities. Unemployment benefit allowed people to put time into the papers. The Thatcher crackdown on benefits contributed to their demise as people did not have the resources to commit to the outlets.

Phil Chamberlain says many radical publications ran out of steam as grants stopped being offered, areas became gentrified and the founders became knackered without new people to take over. “The vast majority just quietly disappeared.”

Phil said the research shows what people can do when they come together. Their influence can still be felt in the independent sector, such as Somerset Confidential, Dorset Eye, The Bristolian and the Bristol Cable, which has a manifesto similar to publications from the 80s. They are also part of a thread which stretches back to the Chartist papers of the 19th century and the radical pamphlets from the civil war period.

However, this history is disappearing because there is rarely any archive of local media. For a third of the radical publications there is no record of any archive and only 8% have a complete set archived or in a private collection. Swindon Free Press is amongst the few of the radical publications that have been collected in local libraries.

Mainstream journalists sometimes collaborated with their local radical papers. James Garrett recalled that when he was a newly qualified journalist on the East Anglian Daily Times he was blocked from running a story about a nuclear weapons convoy and passed it on the Waverley Clarion, which ran the story.

Mike Jempson worked on the (weekly) East End News in London in the 1980s which ran a training programme that opened doors for journalists from ethnic minorities , some of whom who went on to work for national media. The paper was funded largely by grants from the TUC, the Campaign for Press Freedom, and Tower Hamlets Council. But the council stropped its funding after the paper refused to run an advert promoting “Miss Tower Hamlets.”

Many of the publications listed arts and events in their areas mirrored at a national level by Time Out, City Limits and, in Bristol, by Venue, which eventually closed after the venues launched their own websites.

Simon Chapman, NUJ SWE branch secretary, points out that you need a mainstream media for an alternative to develop. There is still a need for professional journalists who can challenge and interrogate as well as people speaking for themselves. “You can’t have an undercurrent, by definition, if there isn’t a mainstream. Perhaps everything has a place.”

Phil says that indeed many people who cut their teeth on radical media went on to work in the mainstream, and their experience taught them good habits and to ask questions in a more interesting way. “One of the things that people found frustrating and still do with mainstream media is their very simplistic way of putting stories together and who they ask, and where stories come from.”

One of the main aims of the project is to make these papers publicly available and searchable through digitisation. There have been discussions with librarians and university departments about a physical archive might be possible, but nothing has yet emerged.

Clarice Karol Tchatat said that major media companies show little interest in archives because there’s no obvious profit stream. She asked whether it would be possible to build a community archive in the south west to safeguard this heritage.

The RRRP project, based at the Regional History Centre at UWE Bristol, has an online map of the papers they have identified at https://radpresshistory.wordpress.com/the-map/

There is a form for journalists (or readers) to contact the project with memories or information.

As well as the Bristol Voice and Bath Spark, South West publications identified include:

· Bristol Resource and Rights Centre Bulletin (1978)

· Preview 1971-73 (Bristol)

· Seeds (Bristol)

· Spam Bristol Baptist Mills

· Cadburn Unemployment Centre Newsletters (Torquay)

· The Flying Post, (Exeter, which survived into the 2000s)

· The North Devon Snail

· Peninsula Voice (Cornwall)

· Sheep Worrying (Somerset)

· Smoke and Whispers (Somerset)

· South West Newspaper (1970s)

· Swindon Free Press

· Walcot News (Bath)

An article about Bristol Voice A platform for people not usually heard by Hedley Bashforth and Ian Bild is on the project site at https://radpresshistory.wordpress.com/2019/05/14/bristol-voice-a-platform-for-people-not-usually-heard/

There is not a huge amount of literature on the radical press in this period but journalist and academic Tony Harcup, who worked on the Leeds Other Paper, wrote Alternative Journalism, Alternative Voices which is worth a read. Brian Whitaker, who used to work for the Liverpool Post, wrote a great book called News Ltd on setting up Pak-O-Lies and the Liverpool Free Press.