Radical Brighton

related content: Alternative Brighton edited by John Noyce and Francis Jarman

The advent of offset printing in 1960 put a mass communications technology within the reach of the middle class British public. Groups organised around these machines to contribute to the production of radical papers. In Brighton people produced a range of progressive papers such as Attila, Brighton Voice, A Woman’s Place, Aphrodite, Datr, Mole and a host of others, and across Britain hundreds more titles were printed. The phenomenon of reflexivity teaches us that our personal reality of our city is manifested in the physicality of our minds. This means, cities are built in our minds as well as on the streets. In this sense, radical press built new states of Brighton out of statements. It’s here that we have an example of the extraordinary social machinery of young people who identified as alternative/left/freak/radical/hippie brought their literature to life in physical spaces in the the city.

Concerned about the preservation of and access to these local papers, in 1991 Brighton-based Harvester Press microfilmed a selection of issues from 131 titles and published an Underground and Alternative Press Collection. This collection is being digitised for the first time by the St. Peters House Library preserving an important but perishable material archive. In addition to digitising the Press Collection, this project will present other primary resources and evidence relevant to radical press culture in Britain active between the 1960s-80s.

This collection is important for anyone who wants to understand how people started to perform democracy and live self-chosen lives.Personal choice was influenced by the tone and content of these radical publications. In many ways, they are the precursors to online communities which provide not just calendars of events and news but also a sense of identity and community.

Local papers also served to expand the minds of their readership beyond the boundaries of a provincial horizon by questioning conventionality and arguing for radically different moral compass. Most of us today recognise that it was the convention that was morally corrupt and not the radical questioning. At the time, the voices in mainstream media preferred sophistication to the urgency and sincerity in radical press. The grassroots messages were less concerned with correctness of manner.  Often with little or no editorial control, the correctness of the ideas expressed and the presentation of graphic design were secondary to the principle that anyone who wanted to be, should be published.

Unfortunately, this means that where the writers are white middle class men it’s apparent today that some of the conventional sexist and discriminatory attitudes were reflected in their writing. Undoubtedly, however, this invidious privilege which threaded through some radical press then spurred distinct equality movements which furthered the formation of papers that gave voice to marginalised groups.

Therein is the guiding principle of radical press, that individuals must be allowed the freedom to have a public voice in an environment that expands the interconnections between essentially like-minded (and flawed) people. Any works which resonated with the democratic values were copied and shared in local papers.

The shared value of a free press which allowed for a democracy of voices rather than a correctness of ideas lays the groundwork for bringing people together on terms which focused on their commonality.

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