2 Not that serious?
-
J.D. Taylor
Abstract
The Angry Brigade claimed responsibility for ten high-profile bomb attacks against cabinet ministers, police, employers involved in industrial disputes, and other targets of a broadly anti-capitalist bent over 1970-71 in Britain, and were linked to a further fifteen. This chapter analyses their emergence from a milieu of wider left-wing political violence over the period, and assesses their activities and communiqués, the heavy-handed police investigation that follows, and the trial of the ‘Stoke Newington Eight’ over 1972, whose defence resulted in legal innovations and a significant support group. Drawing on archival research, interviews and historical analysis, it seeks to take the group seriously, often derided as Pythonesque or a suicidal diversion for an isolated minority on the Far Left. While emerging from overlapping networks in the counterculture and young British New Left, it argues that its choice of targets, its horizontal and diffuse organisation, and the crude police crackdown and prosecution forecasts some of the political weather of the far Left in Britain over the 1970s and beyond.
Abstract
The Angry Brigade claimed responsibility for ten high-profile bomb attacks against cabinet ministers, police, employers involved in industrial disputes, and other targets of a broadly anti-capitalist bent over 1970-71 in Britain, and were linked to a further fifteen. This chapter analyses their emergence from a milieu of wider left-wing political violence over the period, and assesses their activities and communiqués, the heavy-handed police investigation that follows, and the trial of the ‘Stoke Newington Eight’ over 1972, whose defence resulted in legal innovations and a significant support group. Drawing on archival research, interviews and historical analysis, it seeks to take the group seriously, often derided as Pythonesque or a suicidal diversion for an isolated minority on the Far Left. While emerging from overlapping networks in the counterculture and young British New Left, it argues that its choice of targets, its horizontal and diffuse organisation, and the crude police crackdown and prosecution forecasts some of the political weather of the far Left in Britain over the 1970s and beyond.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Acknowledgements xi
- Introduction 1
- 1 Revolutionary vanguard or agent provocateur 11
- 2 Not that serious? 30
- 3 Protest and survive 48
- 4 Anti-apartheid solidarity in the perspectives and practices of the British far left in the 1970s and 1980s 66
- 5 ‘The merits of Brother Worth’ 88
- 6 Making miners militant? 107
- 7 Networks of solidarity 125
- 8 ‘You have to start where you’re at’ 144
- 9 Origins of the present crisis? 163
- 10 A miner cause? 182
- 11 The British radical left and Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’ 201
- 12 The point is to change it 218
- 13 The Militant Tendency and entrism in the Labour Party 238
- 14 Understanding the formation of the Communist Party of Britain 258
- Index 277
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Acknowledgements xi
- Introduction 1
- 1 Revolutionary vanguard or agent provocateur 11
- 2 Not that serious? 30
- 3 Protest and survive 48
- 4 Anti-apartheid solidarity in the perspectives and practices of the British far left in the 1970s and 1980s 66
- 5 ‘The merits of Brother Worth’ 88
- 6 Making miners militant? 107
- 7 Networks of solidarity 125
- 8 ‘You have to start where you’re at’ 144
- 9 Origins of the present crisis? 163
- 10 A miner cause? 182
- 11 The British radical left and Northern Ireland during the ‘Troubles’ 201
- 12 The point is to change it 218
- 13 The Militant Tendency and entrism in the Labour Party 238
- 14 Understanding the formation of the Communist Party of Britain 258
- Index 277
