Well Grubbed Old Mole
Mole Express - a snapshot of life inside Manchester's radical youth cultures of the 1970s
The arrival of new printing technology underscored an explosion of underground publishing throughout the 1970s.
In particular the arrival of offset lithography, that allowed individuals and groups with no formal training or skills to layout their own copy.
As Jamila Squire and I have discussed elsewhere … ‘Although offset had been used in the printing industry since the 1890s – as a means to transfer photographic images into newspapers- by the 1950s the process had been adapted to transfer text- in a move that was seen to undermine the organized power of unionized printers who were then trained on the still dominant letterpress system.
Prior to this, those wishing to produce a small run of newspapers had been reliant on a typesetter to arrange their copy and images for them. Letterpress printing, which in Europe had been a mainstay of newspaper production for nearly two centuries, was a highly skilled profession, one that required a finely tuned mix of manual dexterity, physical endurance, and literacy.
Typesetters—who were often printers too—would lay out the copy they received using tiny metal stamps, each carrying a letter of the alphabet, that would be arranged backwards inside frames (known as a base), producing the texts’ negative image. Ink would then be laid over these bases, before being pressed onto paper to create a final positive image. As such, militants required access to a sympathetic typesetter to lay out their published materials for them, and the process—by virtue of the skill involved—was often costly and aesthetically restrictive.
Offset lithography, however, required no formal training for copy to be laid out, and as such was decidedly faster, lending itself to those who needed to communicate an idea swiftly. Individuals or groups could lay out images and texts onto paper using whatever medium they had at hand, be that colored pens, oil paints, or photos torn from magazines.
These pages would be taken to a print shop, where a photographic image of the page was taken. Photographic film stores images as a negative, and through a process of chemical alchemy, negatives would be transferred onto a metal plate. Once furnished with a careful mix of ink, oils, and water, the desired positive image was printed. As no formal training was required to set out copy, offset was a more participatory and creative way to lay out newspapers, and had the benefit of being decidedly cheaper than its alternatives.
Free from the aesthetic restrictions and cost associated with other print technologies, hundreds of radical newspapers, hastily arranged in bedrooms, cafés, university occupations or squats would flood into society, each operating to produce radical consciousness. Arguments and discussions would often accompany their production, and these debates acted to sharpen the political positions of those who produced them. Sympathetic printers would lead those who created such papers to radical bookshops and other distribution nodes. The circulation of underground newspapers would bring their creators into contact with the wider movement, constituted as it was by bookshops, discussion groups, occupations, and demonstrations.
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.
In Britain and in the US, the alternative press, informed by the growing psychedelic pop culture, in opposition to the war in Vietnam, and powered by offset and mimeographic printing would circulate through the “Underground Press Syndicate,” that constituted a transnational “alternative society” at the close of the 1960s. This international network laid the ground for the later Xerox zine revolution that accompanied the arrival of punk rock a few years later—powered as this was by photocopiers exiting the confines of the corporate office and becoming readily available to the mass of youth via newsagents, schools, and libraries. Like offset before it, Xerox required no formal training to lay out an image, and came with the added benefit of requiring no formal training to print either. Above all, Xerox was cheap—cheap enough for someone reliant on pocket money alone to make hundreds of copies.‘ (Squire & Wheeler, 2024)
The WCML hold several collections relating to the underground press explosion of the late 60s.
Of particular interest for Mancunians will be the Mole Express, a decidedly anarchist/situationist flavored underground mag that published 57 issues between 1970-1977.
The Mole Express is useful for capturing the values and aesthetics of Manchester’s own counter-cultural underground as it transitioned from hippy toward punk. The Mole Express is clearly a product of a wider counter-culture- one that was as much informed by the revolutionary politics of 1968’s global student movements as it was the hedonism associated with America’s west coast psychedelic scene.
Through its pages readers can grasp a snap-shot of life inside Manchester’s own ‘alternative society’, with articles addressing local claimants and renter’s unions, squatting, rent campaigns, anti-fascist activity, ‘how-to-guides’ encouraging work refusal, drug advice (how to score them, how to take them safely), alongside listings for upcoming music concerts, benefit gigs, adverts for radical bookshops, meetings and art ‘happenings’.
Several notable luminaires of Manchester’s later punk explosion grace its pages. For example- Issue 4 of Mole Express carry’s a poem by a young John Cooper Clarke, that Dave Haslam in Manchester’s Digital Music Archive has suggested may be the punk laureates first poem in print. Other contributors include Martin Hannett, CP Lee and Roger Eagle- all familiar names to those with an interest in Manchester’s independent music scenes.
Mike Don – a pivotal character behind the Mole Express – suggested to Haslam that at least two members of the Angry Brigade (Britain’s own 1970’s armed struggle group) had contributed to the Mole. While specifics remains difficult to establish, the Mole did carry sympathetic coverage of the Angry Brigade trial and news of upcoming solidarity demonstrations and actions in support of the arrestees.
Magazines like the Mole Express capture the experiences of lives lived inside the revolutionary left of the 1970s, reflecting the general organisational models (or lack there of) adopted by younger militants.
As I discussed recently in a paper I delivered at London’s Historical Materialism conference, young activists constituting the libertarain left of the 1970s favoured ad-hoc associations over the rigidity of formal party membership, often forming brief and time-dependent coalitions that would quickly emerge in response to a pressing issue, campaign or event, before submerging back inside a wider subculture predicated on collective houses, communes, workers co-ops, claimants’ unions, radical newsletters and friendships.
As Max Farrar, a former member of Big Flame would later attest, ‘Big Flame were the only organised and outward facing expression for the libertarian left’.
You can view the Mole Express archive by appointment at the WCML
An exhibition redressing the history, legacy and contemporary relevance of Big Flame is due to open at WCML in summer 2025
Seth Wheeler
References and resources-
Squire, J & Wheeler, S. Eds (2024) A Thousand Little Machines- A/traverso and the Movement of 77. Agit Press. London
Haslam, Dave- Mole Express – A Magazine for Manchester’s Counter Culture – Manchester Digital Music Archive