Greater Manchester has an amazing legacy of alternative and community newspapers from the 1970s — offering us a window into the everyday issues, groups, places, events and organising efforts of the time — yet they are often overlooked or rarely known about today. Many have limited or almost no online presence making them hard to access or discover. Taking this on as part of her University of Manchester Humanities PGR Placement, PhD student Arielle Lawson proposed the “People’s Papers” project as a way to explore and pull together a catalogue of these papers from the WCML’s collection.
Through associated blog posts, events and ongoing digitization efforts, this project aimed to spotlight and “activate” these local histories and materials. In the process, it also served as a practical guide and example of conducting archival research. Overall, the aim was to provide a concrete and tangible contribution by making this collection more accessible and connected to its local context and community. Learn more below!
Digitized issues are now accessible online via the Internet Archive. If you were involved with any of these papers or have any more information or copies of issues that might be missing from our collection so far, please get in touch! You can also follow a continuation of the project on instagram @peoplespapers.
The People’s Papers research project ran during the summer of 2025 with extended activities through the autumn and into 2026. This page serves as a recap of the project. See below for a listing of the papers explored as well as the associated information and resources. You can also follow the project on Instagram and Bluesky.
University of Manchester PhD researcher Arielle has been exploring the archive over the last two months in connection to our project on the People’s Papers. In the post below she shares some updates and tips on the archival research process and what she’s found so far, including an initial overview of the collection. It’s been an exciting last couple of months getting to explore the Working ...
More about the project:
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 previously on the WCML 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. 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.” 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. We hope this project can contribute to their further (re)discovery and continued engagement!
A full listing of the WCML’s holdings:
Any of these papers can be seen in person by booking an appointment at the WCML. Additional information can also be found by searching the catalogue.
PLEASE NOTE: the above is by no means an exhaustive or definite list! Other papers within this category but outside of the WCML collection include: The Lesbian Express, Rochdale Alternative Press, Old Longsight News, Peacemaker, Bolton Alternative Press, Levenshulme Post, Casava Bami (Nello James Centre) and I’m sure many more. There are also so many interesting related materials in the archive, including a rich legacy of tenant and worker periodicals!
Organized in collaboration with Manchester Histories and the AIU Race Centre, this event was a lively and participatory exploration and discussion of Greater Manchester's legacy of 1970s activist community newspapers and print culture with lots of contributions from the audience!
In this online workshop we heard about the ongoing efforts to preserve and make accessible the alternative and community newspapers of the 1970s as important historical, archival, activist and teaching resources. We got a virtual walk through of various forms of DIY archiving and methods of archival activation as well as a deeper dive into some key examples from Leeds, Liverpool and Birmingham.
Building on my previous blog posts, the aim of this last update is to provide a fuller summary of some of the papers I looked at in the WCML collection — as a series of paper profiles — along with resources for those interested in learning more or who might want to carry this research forward. As part of that, I’m also excited to announce that we have our first round of digitized papers also...
Resources to learn more and next steps:
While limited in capacity, we are aiming to digitize as many of these 1970s Greater Manchester “People’s Papers” that we can! These will be uploaded to and freely accessible via the Internet Archive HERE. We are also looking into conducting oral histories and gathering testimonies of those who were involved in order to further document and preserve this history. If you were involved with any of these papers or have any more information or copies of issues that might be missing from our collection so far, please get in touch!
The associated blog posts have more information about the research process and additional resources that could be helpful for further research (including the particular importance of local 1970s directories!). In the course of this research, I also came across other similar projects for other UK cities and/or for similar types publications as was the feature of our online event, Archiving the People’s Papers: Learning from Leeds, Liverpool and Birmingham, as well as via additional “research spotlights” on Instagram (including of the Recovering the Regional Press project!). Some of these associated “people’s papers” from other cities in the 1970s are now also digitized with more information available online (often thanks to the volunteer and activist labour of those who were actively involved at the time!):
Additionally, I organized an archival event at the Mayday Rooms in London, which featured a deeper dive into London’s “people’s papers” in conversation with a few people who were active with these at the time, an event focused specifically on the 1970s Black Radical Press in the UK in collaboration with the George Padmore Institute, as well as an archival workshop exploring NYC’s “people’s papers” at the Interference Archive (as both connected to my PhD research). I hope to continue this expanded research project via the People’s Papers instagram account, so stay tuned!
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 focu...
Drawing from his own experiences writing for some of these papers as well as in-depth interviews with a range of different projects, Bob’s book traces the development and evolution of Greater Manchester’s underground and alternative press scene from the late 1960s through to the 1990s (complete ...
As part of an update on the People’s Papers project, PhD researcher Arielle shares a recap of our recent online webinar and more about the inspiring panelists we heard from. On Tuesday, we had a very well attended online workshop (with over 180 RSVPs!) where we got to hear from some very inspiring...
As one part of wrapping up her research placement, PhD student Arielle shares some highlights from her recent People’s Papers event spotlighting Manchester’s legacy of 1970s alternative and community newspapers and broader grassroots urban activism. In early November, I organized an in-person ev...
Thank you to everyone who was involved or contributed!
This project has extended far beyond the archive and depended on a much wider network of people who have shared their experiences, time and labour. I’d like to give a big thank you to everyone who connected and engaged on this project. Special thanks to the WCML volunteer, Seth, who was vital for the digitization work, as well all of those who were involved in the 1970s and donated additional materials, exchanged countless emails and were up for many chats in helping document this history!
