The Angry Brigade

From:
Et cetera: Steven Poole's non-fiction choice
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/18/karel-capek-angry-brigade-reviews

18 September 2010

The Angry Brigade, by Gordon Carr (PM Press, £17.99)

This fascinating history of "Britain's first urban guerrilla group"
(who fought for the people while stealing their chequebooks) begins
with the 1971 bombing of the house of the employment minister, Robert
Carr, and then works back to the évènements of May 1968, and forwards
through the complex police investigation by the newly formed "Bomb
Squad", and then the lengthy and sensational 1972 trial of the "Stoke
Newington 8", in whose flat had been found explosives, guns and the
equipment used to issue the brigade's sub-Debordian public
statements. Gordon Carr's narrative is scrupulous and suspenseful. We
also hear from one of the convicted, John Barker, proud of recent
demonstrations against arms dealers ("[we] had the nous to do it
without the melodrama of dynamite"; exactly what tune dynamite
normally plays is left unclear), and one of the acquitted, Stuart
Christie ("to engage in remote violence without taking full personal
responsibility is reminiscent of the state itself"). A policeman
offers a sober opinion about the inspirational power of French
theory: "I didn't think Situationism was the driving force behind the
Angry Brigade. It was a style that helped Barker write communiqués."

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