The Angry Brigade : The Cause and the Case. A history of Britain's
first urban guerilla group
Edition:
2nd 2003
Author: Gordon Carr, with preface by John Barker and Stuart Christie;
postscripts by John Barker and Detective Sergeant Roy Cremer (MP Special
Branch).
ISBN: 1873976216
Publishers Christiebooks
Price: £34 RRP UK
Publication Date: September 1, 2003
BETWEEN 1970 AND 1972 the Angry Brigade used guns and bombs in a series
of symbolic attacks against property. A series of communiques accompanied the
actions, explaining the choice of targets and the Angry Brigade philosophy:
autonomous organisation and attacks on property alongside other forms of
militant working class action. Targets included the embassies of repressive
regimes, police stations and army barracks, boutiques and factories, government
departments and the homes of Cabinet ministers, the Attorney General and the
Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
These attacks on the homes of senior political figures increased the
pressure for results and brought an avalanche of police raids. From the start
the police were faced with the difficulty of getting to grips with a section of
society they found totally alien. And were they facing an organisation - or an
idea?
This book covers the roots of the Angry Brigade in the revolutionary
ferment of the 1960s, and follows their campaign and the police investigation
to its culmination in the 'Stoke Newington 8' conspiracy trial at the Old
Bailey - the longest criminal trial in British legal history.
Gordon Carr produced the BBC documentary on the Angry Brigade and
followed it up with this book. Written after extensive research - among both
the libertarian opposition and the police - it remains the essential study of
Britain's first urban guerrilla group. This expanded edition contains a
comprehensive chronology of the 'Angry Decade', extra illustrations and a
police view of the Angry Brigade. Introductions by Stuart Christie and John
Barker (two of the 'Stoke Newington 8' defendants) discuss the Angry Brigade in
the political and social context of its times - and its longer-term
significance.