UK RADICAL PRESS PROJECT

Back in late 1971, when the Generalist was working for the national underground newspaper Frendz, I began writing a regular column called 'Provincial Poontangs' about the numerous small regional and local papers and magazines being produced at that time. It appeared more or less in most issues until the paper folded in 1972 and it elicited a flood of papers from around the UK.

[In my naivety, being 22 at the time, I picked up the word 'poontang' from US underground papers and thought it sounded funny and cool. If you look up the word you'll find its completely inappropriate slang. Ooops!]

In this  May 1972 issue, PP was splashed over a double-page spread, with a list of around 110 publications opposite a map of some beauty created by the illustrator Bobby Dazzler. [Who he?]

The relevance of all this is that The Generalist is delighted to have made contact with a project based at the Regional History Centre at UWE Bristol entitled 'Recovering the Regional Radical Press in Britain 1968-88'. 

'It aims to identify the wealth of small, co-operatively produced local papers that played an important role in radical politics between the heady days of the late 1960s and the rise of Thatcherism in the 1980s. Few of these are now remembered and their history has been largely overlooked. This project, co-ordinated by Phil Chamberlain and Professor Steve Poole from the journalism and history departments at UWE, along with Jess Baines as research associate, will rediscover these lost papers and reconnect with the people who produced them.'

 
More details to come.