The Angry Brigade

Logo associated with the Angry Brigade, used on the cover of The Angry Brigade by Gordon Carr

The Angry Brigade was a British anarchist group responsible for a series of bomb attacks in Britain between 1970 and 1972.

History

In mid-1968 there were demonstrations in London against US involvement in the Vietnam War, centred on the US embassy in Grosvenor Square. One of the organisers of these demonstrations was the well-known radical Tariq Ali. He recalls being approached by someone representing the Angry Brigade who wished to bomb the embassy; he told them it was a terrible idea and no bombing took place.

The group decided to launch a bombing campaign with small bombs to maximise media exposure to their demands while keeping collateral damage to a minimum. The campaign started in August 1970 and was sustained for a year until arrests were made the following summer.

Their targets included banks, embassies, the Miss World event in 1970 (or rather a BBC Outside Broadcast vehicle to be used in the corporation's coverage) and the homes of Conservative MPs. In total, 25 bombings were attributed to them by the police. The damage done by the bombings was mostly limited to property damage although one person was slightly injured.

Resurfaced Angry Brigade of the 1980s

In the 1980s the Angry Brigade resurfaced, as part of the IRSM, the British anarchist armed struggle group - The Angry Brigade II (IRSM)/Angry Brigades Resistance Movement (IRSM).

Aftermath

Jake Prescott, a Scottish petty criminal, was arrested and tried in 1971. Melford Stevenson sentenced him to 15 years imprisonment (later reduced to 10), mostly spent in maximum security jails. Later he said he realised then that he "was the one who was angry and the people [he] met were more like the Slightly Cross Brigade". The other members of the group from North-East London, the "Stoke Newington Eight", were prosecuted for carrying out bombings as the Angry Brigade in one of the longest criminal trials of English history (it lasted from 30 May to 6 December 1972). As a result of the trial, John Barker, Jim Greenfield, Hilary Creek and Anna Mendleson received prison sentences of 10 years. A number of other defendants were found not guilty, including Stuart Christie, who had previously been imprisoned in Spain for carrying explosives with the intent to assassinate the dictator Francisco Franco, and Angela Mason who became a director of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights group Stonewall and was awarded an OBE for services to homosexual rights.

In February 2002, Jake Prescott apologized for his role in bombing Robert Carr's house and called on other members of the Angry Brigade to also come forward.

On February 3, 2002, the Guardian newspaper reported a history of the Angry Brigade and an update on what its former members are doing now.

On August 9, 2002, BBC R4 aired Graham White’s historical drama, ‘The Trial Of The Angry Brigade’. Produced by Peter Kavanagh, this was a reconstruction of the trial combined with other background information. The cast included Kenneth Cranham, Juliet Stevenson, Mark Strong.

In March 2009, British family care activist and novelist Erin Pizzey reportedly declined to comment on the temporary withdrawal by its publishers of the book Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain following her complaint it had falsely linked her to the Angry Brigade.

In music:

• Void, 'The Angry Brigade',
• Wax Dolls (John Watts), Fischer Z, 'The Angry Brigade', 1978
• The Bear Quartet, 'Angry Brigade'
• Architect & Heiress, 'The Angry Brigade'
• War Criminal George Pt. 1, 'The Angry Brigade'
• Rome, 'The Angry Brigade'

See also

• Walsall Anarchists
• First of May Group
• Anarchism in the United Kingdom
• Black Mask
• King Mob
• Movement 2 June
• Weather Underground
• Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Group)

References

• Horspool, David (2009). "Grovenor Square and the Angry Brigade". The English Rebel: One Thousand Years of Troublemaking from the Normans to the Nineties. London: Viking. pp. 384–386. ISBN 978-0-670-91619-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• The Angry Brigade 1967-1984: Documents and Chronology, Bratach Dubh Anarchist Pamphlets, 1978
• Anarchy in the UK: The Angry Brigade, Tom Vague, AK Press, 1997, ISBN 1-873176-98-8
• Granny Made me an Anarchist: General Franco, The Angry Brigade and Me, Stuart Christie, Scribner, 2004
• The Angry Brigade: A history of Britain's first urban guerilla group, Gordon Carr, John Barker, Stuart Christie, 1975 (reissued 2005) ISBN 0-9549507-3-9
• Bending the Bars, John Barker, 2002 (reissued 2006)
• The Trial of the Angry Brigade, BBC Radio 4, by Graham White. Produced by Peter Kavanagh and broadcast August 9, 2002.
• The Angry Brigade: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Britain's First Urban Guerilla Group, (DVD), Gordon Carr, BBC, January 1973. Released on DVD in 2008 by PM Press.
• The Persons Unknown (DVD) by Gordon Carr, 1980. Features as a DVD extra on the January 1973 BBC documentary, 'The Angry Brigade: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Britain's First Urban Guerilla Group'.
• The Angry Brigade: A Documentary Novel (Allison & Busby, 1973) by Sir Alan Burns

External links

• A personal memory of Anna in 1968
• Libertarian community and organising resource. Libertarian communism and anarchism in the UK
• Angry Brigade: Documents and Chronology, 1967-1984
• John Barker's review of Tom Vague's Anarchy in the UK: the Angry Brigade
• Look back in anger (An article by The Observer on the 30th Anniversary of their trial)
• Interview with Stuart Christie (3:AM Magazine)
• Interview with John Barker (3:AM Magazine)
• British minister's home bombed (BBC 'On This Day' article)
• Timeline of actions (spunk.org)
• Obituary of Anna Mendleson
• 1973 article on the Stoke Newington Eight trial
• John Barker's personal page on Through Europe