1971: The Alternative Press | Man Alive | BBC Archive

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:06]It's not a scene to inspire affection among the traditional lovers of rural life. And if Fleet Street has it right, such gatherings are dangerously anarchic, hopelessly drugged, and probably sexually depraved. But to its adherents, the underground offers an alternative to the drab, oppressive, and regimented lifestyle imposed on the rest of us. That alternative has its voices, not only ours, but papers like Ink, Friends, Stink, and oldest of them all, IT.

[00:00:33]Today, some 30,000 people spend 15 pence a fortnight for IT. For that, they get a lot of music, a lot of color, some sex, a look at the drug scene, and endless, often indecipherable cartoons borrowed from the States.

[00:00:47]But now, every page is also an aggressive rejection of our straight society. The IT staff, benign observers of their world, are among the leaders and the guardians of the movement. It's kind of like the mafia, in terms that No, really. No, it's it's like the mafia in terms that families arise.

[00:01:06]I mean, we are very primarily with the IT family, and then we meet these cats, and we're the communications family. And you go down there to the stage, and you meet the rock and roll bands who form into little families around each band, and then the bands all mass together.

[00:01:21]And there is there's slight differences in lifestyle, there's slight differences in attitude and approach. And you know, the Hells Angels aren't here. But if the Angels were here, we'd be talking to them, and they are the Angels. I mean, they're the the extreme end kind of warrior family. And that that is the way it works out, and that's [music] the way the kids who are basically unattached relate to us.

[00:01:42]As a journalist here, do you sort of see it as your duty to go around and talk to people, find out [music] what they think of it?

[00:01:50]Um Essentially, I don't see myself I don't see my primary functions being a journalist. I mean, I see my primary functions being a human being. And my idea is in coming down here is essentially that is to enjoy myself, just as I assume uh most people who come here >> [music] >> want to do. I mean, uh most Yeah, I was going to say my most journalists who come down here who actually believe themselves to be journalists first and foremost, spend all their time down in the beer tent getting drunk, which is a good idea, but never actually participate in the festival, never actually seem to me to enjoy themselves. But if you want to find out what people think of it, you can't merely do that simply by responding to yourself, can't you?

[00:02:31]That's done give you the Oh, yes. Yes, because of the position You you you you can, in fact, just by being by actually participating in the festival, by actually wandering around and enjoying it uh on uh as is sometimes the case, you know, when we have our own tent, being around our own tent, so you can actually >> [music] >> uh get a much better impression of what's going on than than you can from the beer tent. But anyway, I mean, the fact that we are from IT, uh the fact that I am from IT, does mean that a lot of people come and see me that I have a lot of I know a lot of people um who see a lot going on as well that I can talk to, and a lot of people anyway will come and and talk about what's going on. And as you find, I'm often participating in what's going on, which is very much the point.

[00:03:13]Nick, why do you think the people here who do buy the paper buy it?

[00:03:16]Well, really, they buy it, and that's that's the sole function. They buy it for a two-bob laugh, and that that is it.

[00:03:23]Uh that's what we're doing for them.

[00:03:26]Absolutely.

[00:03:28]So, when you're talking about your political ideas or your philosophy, really, they're not interested in that.

[00:03:34]Yeah, they're interested in it. Um Some of them are absolutely dedicated to it. Some of them total agreement with us. But um If it's not a laugh, you think you can forget it anyway.

[00:03:46]>> Yeah, they've got those political ideas already. I mean, we are in no way Dr. Goebbels' grandchildren, you know? And we are not kind of saying, "This is our political idea, and we're going to brainwash you by every kind of trick in the book to believe in it." They believe in it, and they buy the paper because it is a laugh for people who believe in that political philosophy.

[00:04:05]In the rush and confusion of real life, IT's political philosophy, worked out in its Soho office, seems refreshingly simple, if unfailingly crude. The enemy is authority and its representatives, the politicians, the press, and above all, the police. Its friends are those who seek to tear that framework down.

[00:04:23]So, IT bids earnest, if nervous, welcome to the unlikeliest allies. When the Angels wander in, they're treated like any other of Paul Lewis's contacts.

[00:04:32]They are, if only just, part of his scene.

[00:04:35]You seem at times like you're laying down some kind of revolutionary line.

[00:04:38]Ooh. You. Non-involved. Non-involved.

[00:04:41]>> get involved in that. You're not in this I saw a revolution.

[00:04:43]>> No, it's not my revolution. Reporting is a casual occupation. No one goes out on a story. The stories just arrive. And by the end of each fortnight on Friday night, they're ready to become the next edition of IT. The production is haphazard and disorganized. Anyone can do anything or nothing, according to choice.

[00:05:00]And apart from the occasional firm entry of a policeman on public duty, the evening is relentlessly relaxed.

[00:05:06]IT has survived now for five long years, and the staff have the nonchalant confidence of the established underground. What? Hallelujah, I've been saved is here this evening.

[00:05:18]And something which isn't in the text.

[00:05:20]Can you do it outside?

[00:05:23]It's not a long caption. No, it's not.

[00:05:25]It fits with the flavor.

[00:05:27]Hallelujah, I've been saved here this evening. Full stop.

[00:05:31]Close quotation marks, close quotation marks. Can you do it outside?

[00:05:38]Or please, can you Please, can you do it outside?

[00:05:42]All the staff draw the same pay, usually about 15 pounds a week. What's left over just about pays the bills. The money is merely a tiresome necessity.

[00:05:52]Yeah, we were generation raised on comics, and it's kind of making comics serious, rather than making a thing which will, you know, so the newspaper that you can say, "I have public opinion here in my hand," which is uh is a very destructive thing on both on the public and the person who has that power, and it's really all the time it's sort of giving away that power. That's really what it is about. Don't you want what's in IT to be believed? People um should believe nothing. I mean, really, you know, if it comes down to it, I don't think they should believe anything they read. But not Yeah?

[00:06:26]Not even the reports of the atrocities and things like that that you put in there?

[00:06:30]Um I think they should believe that anything is possible.

[00:06:33]Certainly.

[00:06:34]I think they should uh always ask themselves, "Why not?"

[00:06:38]I mean, arguably, uh when we printed the Angry Brigade's first communication, arguably, uh they were totally unbelievable on the talk of bombing and things going on.

[00:06:48]Totally unbelievable. What in fact turned out was true. Oh. And we printed it, you know, because we thought, "Well, maybe it's true, maybe it's not, we don't know, you know, but it could be true."

[00:06:56]And it was.

[00:06:58]It's a newspaper which represents a community.

[00:07:01]Um And since there are now three or four underground papers in this town, it represents almost a specific community.

[00:07:10]Uh we seem to represent probably amongst amongst the freaks that the poorest section.

[00:07:16]And Well, why there is a lot of violence in the paper is simply because um simply because these are the kids who feel that their backs are against the wall the most.

[00:07:29]These are actually the kids, the kids who read our paper, the ones who are beginning to react violently. Uh they're the ones who are are questioning, like their their ethics as they shouldn't react violently, but their practical experience is they should, and this is, you know, the constant dialogue. Do you think that IT is an effective counterbalance to the weight of the establishment?

[00:07:51]Um not by itself, no.

[00:07:56]Along alongside, I think uh IT is is, if you like, a kind of uh a voice, a sort of um an open uh an obvious aspect of a whole movement that's going on. Yeah, I mean, um throughout the country, throughout the world, um a whole movement of people who are um experimenting with the possibilities of life, you know, kicking off the shackles, um fighting back against the people that previously controlled all of that from the dirty planet.

[00:08:31]Um As part of that, then, yeah, I think I IT plays its part effectively.

[00:08:38]By midnight, the embryo IT is ready for the printers, and about to voice its belligerent alternative once again.

[00:08:49]7:15 a.m., Trafford Park, Manchester. A very different alternative is being offered to the men about to enter the gates of GEC-AEI.

[00:08:58]Socialist Worker is an organ of the most radical left, the International Socialists. To sell here needs dedication. Of 10,000 workers, only 25 bought a copy that morning. The pattern is repeated all over the country. It sells in dribs and drabs here and there, most of it on the shop floor.

[00:09:16]But the Socialist Worker is growing fast. Since March, its circulation has jumped from 12,000 to nearly 24,000, making it, apart from the New Statesman, the biggest-selling weekly socialist paper in the country.

[00:09:28]It costs four new pence. It's easy to read and free of political jargon. It's written specifically for the working class, and it copies the techniques of the successful Fleet Street tabloids.

[00:09:39]But its front page is uncompromising.

[00:09:50]The paper has one full-time reporter who spends most of his time on the road. He He school at 15 to work in a factory. He joined the Communist Party and then because the party wasn't revolutionary enough, he left it for International Socialists. Roger Rosewell has just finished his first year as a journalist.

[00:10:06]I think that for revolutionaries, for journalists who work for a revolutionary paper, we don't want to sit in offices.

[00:10:12]We want to be where it actually is happening. To speak to people on the spot. Really to get a feeling of what is happening because that really dictates how we write. The feeling of confidence that people have what has to be done. You can only do that by actually speaking to people. Therefore, though I don't like traveling at all, I find it boring and all the rest, I have to go and do it.

[00:10:32]Rosewell's journalistic contacts are fellow comrades in IS. They're efficient revolutionaries. Not even the smallest dispute is allowed to escape his notice.

[00:10:41]This time, at a small engineering factory on the grim outskirts of Birmingham, there's a strike over the firm's consistent refusal to recognize the union. With over 20,000 unemployed in the city, the factory has no trouble hiring workers at well below union rates. Some of these pickets have been paid wages of just £8 a week. How's it going? Ah, not too bad. Too bad. How long now? Uh, 8 months.

[00:11:04]8 months?

[00:11:06]Still nothing happening? Nothing.

[00:11:07]Nothing. Nah.

[00:11:09]What's the union doing about it?

[00:11:10]Anything?

[00:11:11]They're still just paying money? Well, they're doing what they can, I suppose, but this money won't have negotiations with the union, so.

[00:11:18]The Socialist Worker is a political instrument fighting for workers' control and to build a mass revolutionary movement. So, Rosewell's story, written up in the local cafe, will not only report the strike, it'll also place the blame and lay down the correct revolutionary action for the workers to adopt. They rarely contain the words of management. Why not? Because what they're going to say, I know before I ring them up.

[00:11:42]They say it's wildcat, it's damaging.

[00:11:45]It's won't serve any useful purpose.

[00:11:47]They should get back to work as quickly as possible. They're going to lose themselves out of a job. All these kind of things which you know in advance. And we can sit in the office and write what the manager's going to say 400 miles away. They'll always say the same thing.

[00:11:58]But in a particular situation, how do you get what the management's attitude is? How what their offer is or whatever it may be? From the stewards.

[00:12:06]They'll tell us what the position is.

[00:12:08]Do you see anyone else apart from stewards? Do you speak to the unions?

[00:12:11]Very rarely. Again, uh, the the remarks that they normally make are, uh, just public statements. It's almost like a public relations exercise.

[00:12:20]In which they come out with a few well-known formulas which everybody again can anticipate well in advance.

[00:12:26]But they don't really get to tell you really what's happening, really what's going on. For that, you have to meet the people involved, which are the stewards and the workers, the strikers, the pickets, and that's why we place most of the attention on speaking to them.

[00:12:38]Don't you feel that you get away then from the sort of objectivity which is always the rule book of the of the journalist, the central thing to him to be totally objective? We don't claim to be objective.

[00:12:48]Uh, we we're socialist newspaper.

[00:12:52]We argue our point of view within the paper. And again, I don't think that the national newspapers, those that claim to be objective, are objective.

[00:13:01]Uh, the way in which they write articles always reinforce certain assumptions that people have about things. They don't start off by saying, uh, last year Ford's made 43 million pounds profit.

[00:13:14]This year they're refusing to pay an increase of 30 shillings. How shocking.

[00:13:18]What they say is Ford's are desperately trying to compete with their foreign rivals and this means they've got to make more than 40 pounds 43 million pound a year profit. Uh, the workers are being too greedy. It's very much like when you see the news and they say, uh, good news for Britain today.

[00:13:35]Uh, British Leyland profits are up. Bad news, a strike has happened at one of British Leyland's factories.

[00:13:41]They slant the news and distort it and present it in a way which reinforces certain assumptions that they impose upon the society.

[00:13:49]And the job of a socialist newspaper is to place an alternative view uh, upon those events to show that far from working people taking irresponsible action, they're actually trying to maintain the standard of life, to look after their families, to improve their working conditions, and our paper supports them in that struggle and that's the job it seeks to do. All the time that we've been talking, you've been saying we and not I.

[00:14:12]Do you see life in terms of we?

[00:14:15]No, I talking for the organization.

[00:14:18]And I play a part within it.

[00:14:20]And, uh, that means I have a say in it and a vote in it, but it's a collective organization in which democracy takes place and therefore, uh, when I write for the paper, it's not my views which are alone expressed. It is the collective views of the organization which is expressed in the paper. It's a paper which belongs to our political organization. It's not just a few odd, uh, journalists who happen to meet and write something which gives them pleasure.

[00:14:46]It's actually a political fighting weapon, an organizer.

[00:14:50]And therefore, it's seen in those kind of terms.

[00:14:55]Hello, Roger. You've got a pen?

[00:14:56]What?

[00:14:57]It's about 200, I should imagine.

[00:15:00]Rosewell enjoys none of the usual journalistic perks. No expenses, no high-class hotels, no long dinners and longer whiskeys with fellow reporters.

[00:15:09]Every spare coin goes back to the revolution. He spends the night with IS friends or follows his story back to the office. Technically, Socialist Worker is up to Fleet Street standards. The office, manned by a staff of four, exudes an atmosphere of knowing professionalism. Editor is Roger Protz.

[00:15:25]What I'm going to do with this plessy heading, John, is to reverse it out of the bottom of the picture, so In 3 years, the paper's expanded from four to 12 pages. On principle, it carries no advertising and 70% of its costs are recouped in sales. The rest comes from IS support. Socialist Worker knows precisely where it's going. One of the roles is to try and link up the various struggles going on in the working class movement because you have militancy here, militancy there. But, um, very often people don't see the links that their strike is in isolation from another strike. We are trying to argue that what the working class needs is to link up its various struggles, to unify itself in order to go forward and defeat the defeat the government. Is the whole content of the newspaper then politically orientated? Very much so.

[00:16:13]Yes.

[00:16:14]Aren't you imposing your views on people in a very dogmatic way in the paper?

[00:16:21]We try not to. We believe that, um, we are only important in the sense that we believe that we have ideas about revolutionary socialism, about totally changing the society, which are very important, but by ourselves, we can't make the change. The change can only be done by the great mass of working people themselves. Would you Sorry. Therefore, our program has to be something which is developed in struggle. The working class have in struggle to see whether or not our ideas are of any use to them. You spend quite a lot of your time attacking the press as if there was a conspiracy against the people. Why?

[00:16:58]There isn't a conspiracy. It's just that the ruling class, which is a very tiny minority in this country, have their own ideas and they impose those ideas by their control of the mass media, newspapers, television, magazines.

[00:17:11]We've been brought up to believe that we have a free press in this country, but I'm not very impressed by a freedom which means that 90% of the press is owned by six very powerful organizations. Not just in Fleet Street, but most of the regional and the local papers are all owned by these same six enormously wealthy and powerful organizations. Nearly all of them owned and controlled by conservatives.

[00:17:32]Therefore, most of the press by and large is putting out a lot of propaganda, very often crude anti-trade union propaganda through their ownership of the press. And that is why we think that we have to hammer away at this this myth of of a free press in this country.

[00:17:47]But you inevitably put forward your own propaganda in response.

[00:17:50]>> Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes, but we're speaking on behalf of 90% of the population. Whereas Lord Thomson and company speak on behalf of of less than 10%. In your judgment? In my judgment.

[00:18:00]Yes.

[00:18:03]The Everyone, printers, reporters, editors, and managers, is paid the average industrial wage of £26 a week. The organization is utterly democratic. Its ideal, workers' control, so far away in the world outside, is lived and loved in this revolutionary retreat. Here, hope, not illusion, flourishes. What's wrong?

[00:18:27]16,000. 16,200. Uh-huh. Oh, well.

[00:18:31]Look at Lord Thomson.

[00:18:39]There can be no illusion, little hope in this dark corner of Liverpool, a decaying segment of an otherwise prosperous area known as Toxteth. The people here live in that euphemism, a twilight zone. Their houses suffer from planning blight. The reality is obvious.

[00:18:55]750 families, most of them tenants to private landlords, live in houses few of which have hot water, bathrooms, or inside lavatories. Roofs leak, plaster crumbles, and wood rots. With a waiting list of 10 or even 20 years for a new council house, the people struggle to preserve what little they've got.

[00:19:14]But it was out of the anger and frustration which such conditions ferment that suddenly last spring, Toxteth found a voice.

[00:19:22]One of the leading editorial figures is housewife Chrissie Maher.

[00:19:25]How did it start? Because when we found that we were campaigning about things and we wrote to the local papers, they took the fire and originality out of things that we'd said.

[00:19:34]So that when we read it, we didn't feel angry at it. So we felt sure that other people, the people concerned it was meant to get at, wouldn't feel angry at it. How did they take the sting out of it? Well, they just did. They were very pro-corporation. The corporation said today something or other thing which completely overwhelmed what we wanted, you know, what we wanted to say. They never give us a fair crack of the whip.

[00:19:54]Why did you think a newspaper would be the right answer?

[00:19:57]Oh, gosh, it's like a weapon. You can threaten them with, you know, everybody can talk to you. They can come and promise you all kinds in the house. But when you put it in writing for thousands of people to read, it's something different.

[00:20:07]We found this did read This really did work after the first edition.

[00:20:10]Who is the Bugle fighting against?

[00:20:13]I would say two people. Section of the public who do, you know, make their own environment very bad by throwing things out. You can clear some of these houses overnight and you can go back the next day and there's ashes and muck and old mattresses. But they've only got to go down to the local corporation yard and they'll pick it up.

[00:20:29]And the other, of course, is the Liverpool Corporation. I think they're making a stinking lousy job of Liverpool. I mean, I've lived in Liverpool all my life and when I can go to town and see nothing but concrete and I come back home and I'm no better off.

[00:20:40]They're still building concrete.

[00:20:42]You know, they all live over in the Wirral in beautiful Wirral where there's lots of trees, lots of grass, lots of amenities. And then just They I feel that they're like pawns and they need to move us around like sections of the community without really coming to talk to us.

[00:20:55]How do you see your own job on the paper?

[00:20:58]Oh, gosh, one is a public relations person, >> [laughter] [gasps] >> We've got to try and keep the people of the Bugle all working together, you know. No No one must ever stand up and say, "Well, I run the Bugle or I do this. I do that." because it's not true.

[00:21:11]Everybody has a fair share and without one of these people, the Bugle would collapse.

[00:21:17]The Bugle draws its dynamism entirely from the local community. Projects like the weekly keep-fit class ensure that the community keeps together. It has housewives, schoolgirls, shop assistants, clerks, secretaries and a school meals attendant.

[00:21:30]>> [applause] >> After the keep-fit class, the women are joined by, amongst others, a factory charge hand, a telephone engineer and a retired surveyor for the twice-weekly editorial meeting. They discuss constant financial crises, argue out editorial policy and lay down their code of conduct. The editorial committee reserve the right to cut shop or hack it to pieces out of anything. But I can honestly say I can say in all fairness that everything that we've cut, we've never ever put another slant on any story No. that what we've cut has always been to the advantage of the writer and never to the advantage. And we've never had a complaint. Never Never ever.

[00:22:08]That's fine. Thanks. Now, we'll do one more shot.

[00:22:10]>> There is some escape from the battle.

[00:22:12]This month's Miss Tuebrook is Ann Thompson, a 16-year-old apprentice hairdresser who works just across the road from Chrissie Maher's house.

[00:22:21]I just look Ron Hindley is a factory worker. He takes and prints nearly all the Bugle's photos free of charge.

[00:22:30]That's lovely. Thanks. That's a good one.

[00:22:34]But the pressure of reality doesn't leave much space for escapism.

[00:22:38]Ma Lewington, or Louie, has lived here for 45 years. She still has no hot water, no bathroom and from her lavatory in the backyard, you can see the grimy sky through the holes in the roof.

[00:22:49]Louie is a fighter and has her own old-age pensioners column in the Bugle.

[00:22:54]I'll go to find out what it's all about.

[00:22:58]You know, when the old-age pensioners comes up to me and says, "So-and-so, so-and-so." And if I can't give a complete answer, then I'll put it in the column.

[00:23:08]I know I'm perfectly well that somebody's going to answer back. And there that's how we find out how things are going on.

[00:23:16]But I generally write exactly as they tell me.

[00:23:20]And I always find out that it's correct before I put it in.

[00:23:25]I won't put anything in the column unless I've seen it. Read it out and tell me I've got to see it in fact before I put it down.

[00:23:33]But they're all very nice about it, you know.

[00:23:36]But I can't write a long column.

[00:23:38]I'd get stumped if I went there.

[00:23:40]>> [laughter] >> I think I'd be going off down memory lane myself. That'd be no use to anybody.

[00:23:48]Moira Renwick is 15 and still at school.

[00:23:51]Her assignment for the Bugle is typical.

[00:23:53]The corporation has already closed the local hot baths on which the old-age pensioners relied. Now it threatens to shut the swimming pool on Monday nights, the one evening on which the Tuebrook Ladies Marine Group can arrange instruction.

[00:24:05]As no groups are allowed in without an instructor, they face a lockout and the Bugle's taken up the issue. Why are the baths closing down, Tom?

[00:24:12]Uh well, they reckon that it's um economizing and they're closing all the baths down for one day.

[00:24:19]The whole day or just Uh yeah, for the whole day and it's only open for schools.

[00:24:24]It's not open to the public at all.

[00:24:27]Don't you get enough money? You know, when the people come in and pay, there's enough Uh well, it's >> the corporation cutting down?

[00:24:34]>> No, well, they The corporation are trying to save money, you see.

[00:24:38]And uh they're also trying to find out whether they get more money uh out of the public, off the public or you know, or whether they get more money off the schools uh through the clubs that come in, you see.

[00:24:53]Although the Bugle is studiously non-aligned and has no coherent political philosophy, it's becoming inevitably, issue by issue, more militant, more political, more radical.

[00:25:04]Increasingly, they see the guilty as those who are in power and so far the community's moved with them. Demand for the paper's so great that the schoolchildren who sell it can earn 50 p an hour on commission. It takes about 3 hours to sell out.

[00:25:30]The main threat to the Bugle is not a competitor, but simply that to get the paper out each month with a part-time, unpaid, amateur staff is editorially exhausting. One senses that if one or two were to fall out, then the rest would tumble down behind them. But it's lasted 9 months and so far the Tuebrook Bugle shows no sign of collapse.

[00:25:50]Excuse me. Can you tell me why you buy the Bugle?

[00:25:54]It lets you know what's going on around and gossip and [screaming] what they're going to do. Gives you a bit of hope.

[00:26:00]Gives you a bit of Hope. About what?

[00:26:03]About the houses in general.

[00:26:05]You know, we're living the way we are.

[00:26:07]No conveniences, outside toilets and things like that.

[00:26:11]Can you tell me why you buy the Bugle?

[00:26:13]It's a damn good paper, that's why. It brings out all the problems in the area.

[00:26:16]It uh sort of exposes uh some of the things that's going on in the council and what they're doing.

[00:26:21]The devious uh underhand way of placing some of these councilors and some of the idle ones or some of the council as well.

[00:26:28]Can you tell me why you don't buy the Bugle? Because I can get all the local news that I want to know about through the Echo.

[00:26:34]I want to move away from here, you see.

[00:26:36]And I've been waiting for 9 years for a corporation house.

[00:26:42]Don't you like hearing about the problems of this area?

[00:26:46]Uh oh, I like hearing about them, yes, but um there's nothing I can do about it, can I?

[00:26:54]The paper has made some real enemies.

[00:26:56]The envious, the vicious, the frightened, the tired and the socially blind actually hate the Bugle.

[00:27:02]The sellers keep away from their doors.

[00:27:04]But does the antagonism worry Chrissie Maher? I love it. I revel in it because at last, you know, for 6 months the paper's been out. We've been trying to get people to talk about their environment. Now, they've been so hopelessly caught up in their own lives, they're going in through the front door and they don't really care much about what happens outside. At last, the paper's antagonized them to the point where they're getting out in the streets and they're saying, "This is wrong." you know. And to me, I go in and I'm really happy about it because what they're talking about is their environment. And this is something that I've been after for a long, long time. It's now the topical subject on everybody's lips at this very moment. Their environment they're living They're arguing about it.

[00:27:39]Some are for, some are against. This is exactly what we wanted because the more people will realize the environment they're living is not quite as nice as they think it is.

[00:27:48]Do you think you're going to be able to change Tuebrook?

[00:27:51]No, I don't think I'll ever get the chance. I think that bulldozers will come and flatten us out completely. This is uh this is the general thinking in the council at the moment, you know, the quickest way to squash the Bugle is to knock the house down, scatter the people that belonged and do it.

[00:28:04]You know, and then they're in somebody else's head, not in ours.

[00:28:09]Jonathan Dimbleby's report on just three examples of the alternative press.

[00:28:15]In the studio, we have some of those people we've seen on film. Felix Dennis, a defendant in the Oz trial, one of the founders of a radical student paper and a freelance journalist who writes regularly for black radical publications and as well, editors and writers from both national and local sections of what might now be called the established press. First of all, if I could ask you, Brian Roberts, do you feel that the established press is in any way, perhaps, failing to provide for all the needs of all the readers and that is perhaps why there's been such a growth of the alternative press?

[00:28:53]I think there's room for the alternative press as well as for the national press.

[00:28:58]The alternative press is returning to the tradition of 18th century Grub Street and in that, I think, is performing a useful function.

[00:29:07]Can I ask you, John Whale, do you think uh that there is more that the established press could do or should do or might even be prodded into doing by the growth of anti-establishment publications?

[00:29:22]I was struck by a phrase which a staff member of IT used.

[00:29:27]The kids who feel their backs to be against the wall.

[00:29:31]I think it is a charge that lies against us that we don't speak to their condition.

[00:29:37]I think the people in boring, dirty jobs, the housewives in boring and dirty suburbs, have an accusation to make against the established press. We try to serve their needs.

[00:29:53]We are not always ubiquitous enough, sufficiently vigilant to serve their needs.

[00:30:00]I'm not convinced though by what we saw that the alternative press is well placed to do that either.

[00:30:08]Peregrine Worsthorne, what do you feel when you look at the alternative press?

[00:30:15]What sort of passions does it arouse in you? Do you Do you feel that perhaps there's a something that you and other journalists have neglected to be or do because there are so many papers like There are an enormous number of things that the national press neglects to do and that obviously in the nature of any kind of mass society, this is bound to be the case.

[00:30:37]When you have a society of millions of people and you have, let us say, a dozen, a generous estimate, national papers, there must be millions of voices that are not being expressed, millions of views that are not hearing the light of day, millions of complaints that are never aired and so on.

[00:30:57]This is absolutely inevitable. And I'm very happy to say that because of modern technical developments, it's now much cheaper to produce papers and so some of these complaints, views, prejudices can now get circulated in a way that wasn't possible before.

[00:31:17]It is absurd for the national press to be presented or to present itself as having in some miraculous way covered the whole waterfront of opinion or fact or information in the country and of course it doesn't really claim to be doing this.

[00:31:33]And in so far as the alternative press, because of the new cheap technical opportunities, is filling this gap, I'm 100% behind it.

[00:31:43]But I think when one looks at the um individual products and listens to the exponents of the individual products on television as we have tonight talking about what they're trying to do, I was, I must say, uh dismayed by the low intellectual, professional quality, almost inability to use the English language that the editors of IT, is it called, uh displayed. I couldn't follow a coherent thought from beginning to end. They seemed to be to have absolutely nothing to say. One of them seemed to me to be saying, might have been the editor of Punch, we're here for a good laugh. That's all we have. What is a shilling's worth of good a good laugh? Well, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but he didn't make me laugh cuz he didn't say anything funny. He didn't have a joke to tell you. He looked a bit funny, but that can't be the object of his appearance. He seemed to me to be simply a man with with of a very [ __ ] intellectual caliber. I was bored by what he said and so forth.

[00:32:46]As you did I couldn't understand him. He didn't seem to be really to be up to the job. As for the Tubrooke Bugle, I was enormously impressed and moved by what they were trying to do. I think the columnist too talked about her job, uh how she didn't report anything she hadn't actually experienced. This was absolutely the proper voice of journalism speaking and I find her an extremely impressive member of my profession. And I think the Tubrooke Bugle would seem to me to be doing a thoroughly useful job.

[00:33:16]As for the the Socialist Worker, I'm not absolutely clear what it's doing which the Morning Star isn't already doing and I suspect that the real argument there is between two little power groups within the Communist Party tending to be competing against each other. McFarlane, am I supposed to pick up this slur of being intellectually incapable because it really does seem rather irrelevant?

[00:33:40]>> and do it. Let's try. Talk coherently and um put a point of view. Put a point of view.

[00:33:45]>> here on display and prove that I am, you know, more intellectually perceptive than you are.

[00:33:50]>> unfair to someone like me cuz I don't come from IT myself, you know, I come from Oz. But I think it's very, very unfair, you know, for you to for you to introduce McFarlane by saying, here is an intellectually incapable person. If I did that [clears throat] to you, you know, I mean I I doubt very much, on the spur of the moment, I doubt very much whether you would have a very, very good answer for it. And I I think you ought to apologize. I shouldn't worry about it. You've got them on the run. They're rattled, you see. That's why they're being so arrogant and patronizing cuz they're frightened. Well, let me put a point >> essentially this is this is really the This is really the the the truth about the alternative press that we do not blow ourselves into this somewhat pompous position of saying, we are intellectually correct in presenting you with information. I mean essentially the press and TV is the entire source of information about what is going on around anybody who's maybe working in a factory, who is who's just going through their daily life. Their daily life is limited to to their gossip, to what their workmates tell them, to basically sort of grassroots information and then press and TV come along with a much larger coverage of the situation.

[00:34:48]Now, really I mean I I I I feel that I'm dealing with I'm communicating to a set of people who are brought up on television. They're brought up on Eric and Ernie. They're brought up on comic books. They're brought up on rock and roll music. And uh I I feel it's basically down to me that I have to communicate to them in those terms. They can perfectly well understand it and in fact they can you know that we're dealing with people who would rather possibly read William Burroughs than Jane Austen.

[00:35:18]Uh it's not immediately apparent. It's not immediately explicit in those terms, but you find by just by experience. I mean we've been doing the job for 5 years now that this is the kind of terms they they do relate to us then. I mean possibly you do not relate to it because you don't have the same cultural background that people we are communicating to do. Is there in any sense in you a desire to put your viewpoint uh or the viewpoint of your paper in front of a wider audience than those that are already believing in it?

[00:35:49]Would you like, for instance, to convert to your point of view or to persuade to the truth of your point of view uh those that aren't already impassioned or just believers? I really feel very dubious about the idea of converting people to your point of view. I mean let's face it, the conversion of people to one's point of view has been reduced to such a fine art and in some ways really such an obscene art these days that frankly it you know I mean you can convert people with their sexual limitations or make them buy chocolate bars nowadays and this is you know you know this is really so bogus that it seems, you know, not something I really want to get in involved in.

[00:36:28]Essentially I present things as they come to me immediately and if people pick up on them, then it is then it's valid. If they don't pick up on it, then I'm just working, you know, purely well, purely kind of, you know, artistic sense, you know, that this is an irrelevant thing which people may either may either like or they may not like and they'll read it or they won't read it. And this I think is the difference is that we are not And what you know what we've come to call the straight press, you know, people like Peregrine Worsthorne, you know, who I won't be any I won't be as rude to as he was to us. Um except to say that I think to be fair, to get this thing out of the way at the moment No, I don't think there's no need to get it out of the way. Let's just drop it. Get on Let him get on with what we're talking about.

[00:37:07]I think the difference between, you know, his kind of press and ours is that we don't go after a readership. We don't sit down as I think it would be fair to say a large [clears throat] number of people employed by the national newspapers do.

[00:37:20]We don't sit down and think in terms of how can we capture this segment of an audience that we're obviously missing out on.

[00:37:27]We don't, for example, chase, uh to give you an example, as the Sun does, uh the Mirror's circulation. We don't engage ourselves in the in in that kind of behavior. Um we attempt to bring out to produce papers that we ourselves would be interested in and and assuming at the same time that there are large numbers of persons like ourselves who would be interested in what we have to say and we have um certainly in the case of Oz and the other papers been proved correct. Oz is now read by over 1/4 million people.

[00:37:54]There is a problem here, Mr. Dennis.

[00:37:57]Granted that we are, to too great an extent, the middle classes talking to the middle classes. Your problem, to some extent, is to talk to the middle classes too on behalf of the oppressed, to explain why the young, the black, the poor feel oppressed, are oppressed in this country. Now, your papers do not make this point. Oz, for example, is extraordinarily hard to read. Not merely is it hung up on drugs to an extent which is quite amazing to anyone who's not actually on drugs, but it is physically difficult to read colored print on colored pictures, this kind of thing. It does not make its point well.

[00:38:29]Why is that?

[00:38:30]>> Well, let let me explain to you. You have missed, first of all, the you know, the the basic a thing which I tried to explain, not very well, obviously, a a few moments ago. We are not attempting to reach vast majorities of middle class people. We are speaking to a cultural group who already understand what we have to say.

[00:38:50]>> to yourselves.

[00:38:52]If you like. I mean that that's very that's very funny thing to say and I applaud you for it. We need some humor in this studio.

[00:38:57]>> [laughter] >> But, you know, but you know, when you say ourselves, are you talking about the quarter of a million people who in 4 years have already decided they want to read Oz?

[00:39:05]There is also there is also a relationship with our legendary middle income, middle class people who apparently don't uh uh are totally unable even physically to read underground papers. Is that An illustration of this is that I was in a pub the other day uh by accident I I seem to have gotten myself into a a middle income, middle class pub, or at least a pub with a middle income, middle class clientele.

[00:39:27]And there was there was a a middle-aged businessman with his um with a copy of Oz which he just bought on the newsstand.

[00:39:35]And he was joking with his friends, kind of nudge, wink, I'm going to take this home and read it in the toilet.

[00:39:40]Now, essentially I feel that probably it's more worthwhile that he takes Oz home and reads it in the toilet than he is presented with, you know, an intellectually rigorous argument for the same points we're making. Because in that very kind of private, sweaty situation of him reading Oz, looking at all the all the breasts and thighs in the toilet, he's possibly going to get across to him a lot more than maybe the Sunday Telegraph would because he is in this very close, secretive environment and he's reading this thing. The reaction The reaction to the people I relate to, to my own friends, to the same kind of people out of the country is entirely different. It comes into their house, they read it, it's their it's their journal. But there is this middle-class businessman sitting in his toilet with his pants around his ankles reading Oz. And frankly, I if I can relate to him on that level because I'm not in a position to put out a a national newspaper every Sunday with millions of millions of readers, I'm probably not even intellectually capable of it, as you say. But nevertheless, I can put out a publication which which middle-aged businessmen read in their toilets at at their leisure, I feel that then possibly we are getting across to them.

[00:40:42]But it's in a different way and we're getting across to them rather than rather than giving them a glossy magazine of ladies with pigs and chickens, which is the normal staple diet of middle-aged businessmen.

[00:40:50]>> let me ask Roger Protz then. Do you feel that to an extent that you are preaching to the converted, you're selling Worker News to workers?

[00:40:59]No, I don't think we're preaching to the converted. You see, I take up John Wells' point about the middle-class press talking to the middle-class. Now, that isn't the problem. The problem is that the middle-class press, that is the press owned by the ruling classes, I would call it quite bluntly, is talking to the great mass of working people and it is feeding them lies and distortion and misinformation.

[00:41:20]And the role of a revolutionary socialist paper is to strip away the myths which the bourgeois press, the capitalist press, implants in people's minds. And therefore, it isn't a question of converting people, as the last speaker said, it's a question of raising people's consciousness to make them see the possibility of real social change. Now, the just a minute, the uh the straight press, the so-called straight press, is falling down in this field, not because they they want to be better. I mean, the initial discussion was about how to reform the straight press. Now, you can't reform something which is in the hands of a tiny minority with their own vested interest. You have the situation in Liverpool with the comrades here who have to produce a paper because of the woeful inability of the Liverpool straight newspapers to tell the truth to the local community. Well, they didn't, to be fair to them. I don't think they were being >> not say that. They did not put it as definitively or hurtfully as that.

[00:42:14]All they said was that they felt that they wanted their own publication to represent their own needs cuz they didn't think they were getting enough time and space and passion. Well, put your Possibly yeah yeah, give you know, give us time and we'll back this one up 100%.

[00:42:29]>> Let me Let me say the real thing is May I ask you something that might interest those watching this program.

[00:42:33]You carry advertising in your paper and obviously charge the advertisers for it.

[00:42:40]Do you envisage a time when, as you grow more successful, the advertising that you carry might become a problem for you? What happens when you have to do a story in your area which is directly in conflict with your biggest advertiser?

[00:42:57]Well, this is one of the biggest criticisms of our big newspapers, they do pander to their advertisers, we don't. The only reason why we have advertising at all, until we get straight on our feet and we do live on a shoestring from hand to mouth, we will cease to have advertisers. We vet every single advertiser that does with our paper. We do not take finance ads. We do not take supermarket ads for the simple reason that we know at one time that we are going to slam them. We also All our advertisers are very well aware of us.

[00:43:23]When that when we for instance, we went along to one particular fish shop and we said, "We've had a complaint against you. You're a very good, nice man, a very good advertiser. You don't put your prices on the food." Within an hour, the prices were on the food because he knew what we'd do to him if he didn't.

[00:43:37]And all our advertisers, because we are local people dealing with local advertisers, they are well aware of what our paper means and our paper means the truth. And this is everything that we print and that is the truth out of the Tub Bugle. We'll never ever get to the stage whereby we'll pander to advertisers. If we do, the Tub Bugle will cease to exist. I think we want to stress here You know, here's the difference between, what you like, if you want to call them straight papers and alternative papers, because, you know, their paper, you know, the Tub Bugle, which I've never read in my life, you know, I've just heard them talking about, I have to admit that straight out. But their paper is obviously produced within a community that already understands itself. You know, if you like, you could you could level the criticism at them that in fact they are only talking to the converted. You know, that is the converted people that live without toilets, you know, outside toilets and with tin baths. Sure, they do. But they're doing a job.

[00:44:25]>> weren't leveling any. I don't think anybody on this side You were leveling enormous criticisms at us because we were talking because we were talking amongst ourselves. I think the people the people over here we're we're hearing like basically the same line these kind of rather I mean, I'm not putting them down essentially, but they're coming up with this that people in Tub Bugle are working-class people, romantic, they have tin baths, uh they have outside toilets and it's terrible and like we now have kind of 1930s bleeding-heart middle-class do-goodings of attitude towards them. We essentially deal with a set of people who grow their hair down to their feet, who mess themselves up on drugs, who possibly fall down in the street and to all these gentlemen here are thoroughly obnoxious. However, we supply a paper which is to some extent is possibly attempting to propagandize other people. To the greater extent, is attempting to entertain, service and inform those people cuz they find absolutely nothing for them in the Sunday Telegraph apart from editorials essentially that are saying that these people should be wiped off the face of the earth. The Telegraph in general is notorious for giving the maximum publicity to every hippie atrocity. I think Charlie Manson was best covered by the Daily Telegraph.

[00:45:32]Every day we had reports of the Manson trial which occurred in no other paper.

[00:45:36]Uh they don't want to read this.

[00:45:38]Therefore, we present a paper which is going to readable and so do ours, which is going to be acceptable in their terms.

[00:45:44]Obviously, the Telegraph is going to dislike it. Obviously, all of you are going to dislike it simply because you dislike the people who are reading it.

[00:45:50]You probably dislike the people who are producing. The whole situation is loathsome. But nonetheless, None of us have gone on record to say we disliked any of you at all. Well, three At least I mean, it has been said. No, you must have put words in my mouth. Let me take a second and go go what to one of the problems that we we seem to be confused here because there is a there is, in my mind at least, um the difference between a community in terms of of a geographical area, you know, which obviously the Tub Bugle serves, and the difference between a community who aren't necessarily necessarily related to one another because of their geography. I mean, Oz magazine and the other underground papers does serve a community. There is It does serve a particular cultural class, if you like. But they aren't necessarily geographically related. What what what what interests me about the argument really here is that you you you you you you you you you you