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The People’s Papers: Exploring Greater Manchester’s Activist Neighbourhood Newspapers from the 1970s

Announcing a new research project! In partnership with the University of Manchester’s new Humanities PGR Placement Scheme , we’ll be welcoming a PhD researcher, Arielle Lawson, to the Working Class Movement Library archives this summer. With a background in social movement archival research focusing on NYC and London, she’ll now be getting the chance to dive into the history and materials of Greater Manchester, specifically focusing on an often overlooked collection of activist neighborhood newspapers from the 1970s.

While there are a couple of more well-known “alternative” newspapers and magazines from the 1970s that have received more recent coverage — such as the Mole Express in Manchester, which was also written about on our  blog — this period saw a blossoming of local and DIY publishing growing out of the underground cultural and activist scene. This was particularly important for and connected to new forms of grassroots politics and community organizing that were emerging, which were often building their networks and circulating information outside of or adjacent to official (and traditionally top-down) systems of electoral politics or trade unions’ publishing. 

As Jamila Squire and Seth Wheeler write: “These contacts, and the newspapers that travelled between them, created the thick social bonds on which Britain’s underground counter-culture was built. In effect the printed word, to paraphrase Lenin, acted as the scaffolding around which the movement itself was constituted.”

With new methods of cheap printing, these “alternative” papers were often creative and crowdsourced projects developed collectively by small groups of people to meet a particular need of sharing information, news and resources. In some cases, as mentioned above, these were more affiliated with the underground or counterculture scene, often with a particular focus on music or a more general scope of the city. The Mole Express and Grass Eye, for example, are two perhaps more well-known magazines offering (in the case of Mole Express) “a glimpse of the anarcho, post-hippy subculture in Manchester,” as Dave Haslam recounts on the Manchester Digital Music Archive website. The Manchester Free Press (affectionately known as “Freep”), formed initially as an alternative newsheet during a newspaper work stoppage, aimed to print “the news you’re not supposed to know.” 

A photo of issue #24 of the Manchester Free Press, which features, "the news that you're not supposed to know."

In many cases, and with a history that is much less well documented, these papers also focused on specific local neighborhoods: from the North Manchester Eye to Moss Side News to Longsight News and beyond. While practically unknown to today’s generation of Mancunians (especially as they often don’t appear to exist on the internet), these “people’s papers” provide a fascinating snapshot of everyday life and politics in Greater Manchester from this time period — and we’re excited to dig into and share more from the archives over the course of the summer! 

A photo of Longsight news, focusing on the section, "What is Longsight news?"

About the project:

Focusing on pulling together a collection of these disparate neighbourhood newspapers from the 1970s in the Working Class Movement Library collection, this summer research project will spotlight and “activate” these local histories and materials. In the process the hope is that it will also serve as an example and teaching tool of the archival research process itself. Overall the aim is to provide a concrete and tangible contribution in making this collection more accessible and connected to its local context and community.

The Working Class Movement Library has an amazing collection of materials but due to the size of the archive and limited staff capacity, hasn’t been in a position to fully explore the materials. Researchers can play a role in helping make the archive more visible to the community and help generate potential future further research as well. This is especially relevant for this project as the aim is to connect to our community history here in Greater Manchester and hopefully establish more links between past and present working-class organising and activism.

Throughout the summer, we’ll be posting updates on the project. This will involve digitising materials and spotlighting materials on the blog and social media, compiling additional information about the papers (especially if we have anyone who was involved interested in sharing!), and organising public events to engage with the materials and their histories in more depth.

If you are interested in getting involved in this project or have related materials or memories to share, please get in touch!

arielle.lawson@manchester.ac.uk

Interested in learning more about the history of the radical press and alternative newspaper in the UK? More resources and related projects below: 

A number of other alternative papers have now been digitized or have their own online archive. These include:

 

  • Written by:
  • Nathan Godfrey
  • Category:
  • Blog
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