We want to riot, not to work: The 1981 Brixton uprisings

We want to riot, not to work: The 1981 Brixton uprisings

Pamphlet reflecting on the 1981 anti-police riots in Brixton by the Riot Not To Work Collective. Gratefully taken from the fabulous Red Notes.

AttachmentSize
We Want To Riot, Not To Work - full version.pdf5.81 MB
We want to riot, not to work - pages 1-23.pdf49.38 MB
We want to riot, not to work - pages 24-48.pdf38.45 MB

Comments

Samotnaf
Apr 11 2011 09:16

30 years on today...Always loved this photo(the one that appears if you roll down about a third of the way - the one that shows of the methods of rolling over the economy). Anybody got other recollections (for those of us over 38)?

wojtek
Jun 4 2013 22:38

I tried to upload put the pamphlet in its entirety (PDF), but it's not playing so you can download the pamphlet from Red Notes here.

Steven.
Jun 5 2013 21:14
wojtek wrote:
I tried to upload put the pamphlet in its entirety (PDF), but it's not playing so you can download the pamphlet from Red Notes here.

thanks, it wouldn't upload because the file is too big, our maximum is 64 MB. If you could split the PDF into two and upload it into parts that would be great! (Google "split PDF" to do this)

if you don't have time I will try to do this at some point in the next few days

R Totale
May 7 2020 15:15

See here for a contemporary anarchist review of this pamphlet: http://libcom.org/library/direct-action-09-1982

lurdan
May 12 2020 02:52
R Totale wrote:
See here for a contemporary anarchist review of this pamphlet

The review says two London Anarchist printers were raided because of this pamphlet. Two printers were indeed raided simultaneously in April 1982, however that wasn't the reason. (It was actually because of something else being printed by the one which wasn't printing this pamphlet).

Here's a smaller PDF of this in one file :
file link

R Totale
May 12 2020 11:08

Thanks! Out of curiosity, can you say what the raids were about, or is the relevant publication still under some kind of a super-injunction?

lurdan
May 12 2020 19:14
R Totale wrote:
Thanks! Out of curiosity, can you say what the raids were about, or is the relevant publication still under some kind of a super-injunction?

I was present when Little @, which printed this pamphlet, was raided. The raid wasn't much of a raid in all truth. After an initial look round the ATB seemed to be waiting for orders. These came and they left. They expressed no especial interest in anything they saw, or anything we were doing, and the purpose of their visit was unclear. Light only dawned when we learned that someone else had been working on a reprint of a well-known 'instruction manual'.

Fozzie
May 13 2020 06:54

The raids are mentioned in Black Flag and Freedom from the time:

Cover:
https://libcom.org/library/black-flag-vol-06-11-may-1982

P4: https://freedomnews.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Freedom-1982-04-17...

Cover: https://freedomnews.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Freedom-1982-05-01...

The last one is interesting. Includes someone who went to Freedom bookshop as a punter getting a visit from Special Branch at work.

R Totale
May 13 2020 08:14

Yeah, the early 80s DAs I've been going through have a few mentions of street sellers of anarchist papers getting hassle as well - I was trying to think whether that's less common these days, and then realised that there's probably just not enough street papersellers for it to be remotely comparable. Also, perhaps a derail, but interesting to see that Black Flag also mentions police raids in Frankfurt aimed against "the Schwarzer Block organisation".

Fozzie
May 13 2020 10:11

Worth mentioning that Past Tense repubished "We Want To Riot Not To Work" recently also:
https://www.activedistributionshop.org/shop/pamphlets-booklets/3645-we-w...