Radical bookshops in the United Kingdom promote radical literature on topics including animal rights, environmentalism, postcolonialism, self-help, and sexual politics.
Radical bookshops offer activist and countercultural literature for browsing and purchase [1] on topics including animal rights, environmentalism, postcolonialism, self-help, and sexual politics. [2] The shops also serve as venues for activist meetups, book launches, lectures, and other events for similarly inclined people to discuss social issues. [1]
In the 1980s, there were about 80 radical bookshops in the United Kingdom, which The Guardian described as the prime age of radical bookshops. [1]
The Federation of Radical Booksellers was set up in the 1980s to support radical bookshops [3] but has dissolved. [1] The contemporary Alliance of Radical Booksellers has about 40 members. [3]
Despite a rapid decline in independent bookshops leading into 2010, rising grassroots activism from climate activism, the antiglobalisation movement, the green movement, and the feminist movement contributed to resurgent interest in radical bookshops. [1] Amazon and other large book retailers drove down book prices with their purchasing power, putting independent bookshops at a price disadvantage and offering radical titles that once were confined to smaller bookshops. There were six radical/alternative bookshops in the Booksellers Association as of 2010: Bookmarks, Housmans, News from Nowhere, October Books, Radish, and Word Power. Housmans launched an online bookseller in 2010. The anarchist publisher Freedom Press and cafe co-op Cowley Club both have bookshops where anarchists and Greens congregate. [1]
Laurence Housman was an English playwright, writer and illustrator whose career stretched from the 1890s to the 1950s. He studied art in London and worked largely as an illustrator during the first years of his career, before shifting focus to writing. He was a younger brother of the poet A. E. Housman and his sister and fellow activist in the women's suffrage movement was writer/illustrator Clemence Housman.
W & G Foyle Ltd. is a bookseller with a chain of seven stores in England. It is best known for its flagship store in Charing Cross Road, London. Foyles was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest bookshop in terms of shelf length, at 30 miles (48 km), and of the number of titles on display. It was bought by Waterstones in 2018.
Alexander Theodore Callinicos is a Rhodesian-born British political theorist and activist. An adherent of Trotskyism, he is a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and serves as its International Secretary. Between 2009 and 2020 he was the editor of International Socialism, the SWP's theoretical journal, and has published a number of books.
Catherine Hall is a British academic. She is Emerita Professor of Modern British Social and Cultural History at University College London and chair of its digital scholarship project, the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. Her work as a feminist historian focuses on the 18th and 19th centuries, and the themes of gender, class, race, and empire.
The connection between left-leaning ideologies and LGBT rights struggles has a long and mixed history. The status of LGBT people in socialist states have varied throughout history.
Bluestockings is a radical bookstore, café, and activist center located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It started as a volunteer-supported and collectively owned bookstore; and is currently a worker-owned bookstore with mutual aid offerings/free store. The store started in 1999 as a feminist bookstore and was named for a group of Enlightenment intellectual women, the Bluestockings. Its founding location was 172 Allen Street, and is currently located a few blocks east on 116 Suffolk Street.
Self-managed social centres in the United Kingdom can be found in squatted, rented, mortgaged and fully owned buildings. These self-managed social centres differ from community centres in that they are self-organised under anti-authoritarian principles and volunteer-run, without any assistance from the state. The largest number have occurred in London from the 1980s onwards, although projects exist in most cities across the UK, linked in a network. Squatted social centres tend to be quickly evicted and therefore some projects deliberately choose a short-term existence, such as A-Spire in Leeds or the Okasional Café in Manchester. Longer term social centres include the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford, the Cowley Club in Brighton and the Sumac Centre in Nottingham, which are co-operatively owned.
The Cowley Club is a libertarian self-managed social centre in Brighton, England. It opened in 2003, providing resources and meeting spaces for groups and individuals active in areas such as workplace and unemployed struggles, international solidarity, animal liberation, ecological defence, feminist and queer activism and opposing the arms trade. Its political identity is close to anarchism or libertarian socialism. It also houses a vegan community café, a bookshop, and free English lessons for migrants.
Contemporary anarchism within the history of anarchism is the period of the anarchist movement continuing from the end of World War II and into the present. Since the last third of the 20th century, anarchists have been involved in anti-globalisation, peace, squatter and student protest movements. Anarchists have participated in armed revolutions such as in those that created the Makhnovshchina and Revolutionary Catalonia, and anarchist political organizations such as the International Workers' Association and the Industrial Workers of the World have existed since the 20th century. Within contemporary anarchism, the anti-capitalism of classical anarchism has remained prominent.
Compendium Books was an independent bookstore in London specialising in experimental literary and theoretical publications, from 1968 until its closure in 2000. The Guardian's John Williams described it as "Britain's pre-eminent radical bookstore. Whether you wanted books on anarchism, drugs, poststructuralism, feminism or Buddhism, Compendium was the place to go."
The Silver Moon Bookshop was a feminist bookstore on Charing Cross Road in London founded in 1984 by Jane Cholmeley, Sue Butterworth, and Jane Anger. They established Silver Moon Bookshop to share intersectional feminist rhetoric with a larger community of readers and encourage open discussion of women’s issues. The shop served both as a safe space for women to participate in literary events and a resource center to learn about local feminist initiatives. The owners of Silver Moon Bookshop eventually expanded into the publishing field through establishing Silver Moon Books, as well as creating the store newsletter Silver Moon Quarterly.
A variety of movements of feminist ideology have developed over the years. They vary in goals, strategies, and affiliations. They often overlap, and some feminists identify themselves with several branches of feminist thought.
The Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing is a British literary award presented for the best radical book published each year, with "radical book" defined as one that is "informed by socialist, anarchist, environmental, feminist and anti-racist concerns" – in other words, ideologically left books. The award believes itself to be the UK's only left-wing only book prize. Books must be written, or largely written by authors or editors normally living in the UK, or international books available for purchase in the UK. Winning authors receive £1,000. The Bread and Roses Award is sponsored by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers and has no corporate sponsorship.
New Beacon Books is a British publishing house, bookshop, and international book service that specializes in Black British, Caribbean, African, African-American and Asian literature. Founded in 1966 by John La Rose and Sarah White, it was the first Caribbean publishing house in England. New Beacon Books is widely recognized as having played an important role in the Caribbean Artists Movement, and in Black British culture more generally. The associated George Padmore Institute (GPI) is located on the upper floors of the same building where the bookshop resides at 76 Stroud Green Road, Finsbury Park, London.
Reni Eddo-Lodge is a British journalist and author, whose writing primarily focuses on feminism and exposing structural racism. She has written for a range of publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Voice, BuzzFeed, Vice, i-D and Dazed & Confused, and is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications (BLP) is a radical London-based publishing company founded by Guyanese activists Jessica Huntley and Eric Huntley in 1969, when its first title, Walter Rodney's The Groundings With My Brothers, was published. Named in honour of two outstanding liberation fighters in Caribbean history, Toussaint L'Ouverture and Paul Bogle, the company began operating during a period in the UK when "books by Black authors or written with a sympathetic view of Black people's history and culture were rare in mainstream bookshops in the UK." Alongside New Beacon Books and Allison & Busby, BLP was one of the first black-led independent publishing companies established in the UK. BLP has been described as "a small, unorthodox, self-financing venture that brought a radical perspective to non-fiction, fiction, poetry and children's books."
Lola Olufemi is a British writer. She is an organiser with the London Feminist Library, and her writing has been published in many national and international magazines and newspapers. She is the author of Experiments in Imagining Otherwise and Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power, and the co-editor of A FLY Girl's Guide to University: Being a Woman of Colour at Cambridge and Other Institutions of Power and Elitism.
Housmans is a bookshop in London, England, and is one of the longest-running radical bookshops in the United Kingdom. The shop was founded by a collective of pacifists in 1945 and has been based in Kings Cross, since 1959. Various grassroots organisations have operated from its address, including the Gay Liberation Front, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and London Greenpeace. Housmans shares its building with its sister organisation Peace News.
Bookmarks is Britain's largest socialist bookshop. It was founded in 1973 by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and is based in Bloomsbury, London. The company has published books since 1979 and is the official bookseller for the Trades Union Congress.
Publications Distribution Cooperative (PDC) was set up in 1976 to distribute radical, socialist, feminist, green/ecology and community publications in Britain to the book and newsagent trade.