Liverpool Free Press was one of many “alternative” newspapers that circulated in Britain during the 1970s. These small-scale publications, usually confined to a specific city or neighbourhood, differed from the established local press in several ways. Perhaps most importantly, their aim was not to make money and they were not owned by anyone in particular. Typically, decisions on what to publish were made collectively — not by an editor but by what was usually a workforce of unpaid volunteers.
The main impetus behind this activity was dissatisfaction with existing local media which were seen as tame and reluctant to challenge those in power. The alternative press sought to redress that by focusing on things the established press ignored or was thought not to be covering adequately. In reporting struggles against officialdom, employers, or the authorities in general, alternative papers normally took the side of “the people”.
The titles they chose generally reflected those aims. Some — like the “People’s Press” in Aberdeen and Hackney or the “Voice” in Brighton, Bristol and Nottingham — highlighted the idea of speaking up for “the people”. Others chose names that differentiated them from the mainstream press, either directly, as with the “Other Paper” in Leeds and the “Alternative Paper” in Rochdale, or more provocatively with such titles as the “Gutter Press” in Islington and “ALARM!” in Swansea.
Some of these papers had no obvious political line but most were broadly leftist. Usually, though, they were not tied to any particular party or faction — which was one reflection of growing disenchantment with parliamentary politics under a succession of Labour and Conservative governments.
The 1970s were a turbulent time in Britain, with much industrial strife as rising prices cut the real value of wages. Inflation, which had been 6% at the start of the decade, reached 24% five years later. In 1974 industrial action by coal miners and railway workers jeopardised fuel supplies — including those to power stations. To save electricity Edward Heath’s Conservative government restricted use of electricity by businesses to only three days a week. Many pubs closed and TV stations were shut down at 10.30pm. In the midst of that Heath called an election under the slogan “Who governs Britain?” The voters’ answer was not what he had hoped for, and Labour took over with a minority government which fared little better. Its efforts to reduce inflation by holding down pay rises led to widespread strikes in the winter of 1978–1979, which became known as the Winter of Discontent. The following spring, a general election brought the Conservatives back to power, with Margaret Thatcher as prime minister.
Extending the boundaries of politics
Alongside that, growing numbers of people were seeking to extend the boundaries of politics by focusing on power relationships in everyday life — whether at home or work. The most notable example at the time was the women’s liberation movement, with its slogan “The personal is political”. This challenged the traditional view that domestic life — including sex, childcare and housework — was outside politics and that any problems were a matter to be resolved by the individuals concerned. Counter to that, radical feminists argued that empowerment of women was indeed a political issue and should be tackled politically.
Although “the personal is political” had been popularised by feminists the idea of a connection between personal experience and larger social or political structures was also taken up by others such as ethnic minorities and, later, by gay rights activists.
Feminists also questioned conventional ideas about family values and the nuclear family. Social attitudes were changing and traditional views of morality were increasingly challenged by people who wanted to make their own choices without interference from the government or anyone else — an idea encapsulated in another feminist slogan of the time: “Abortion: A Woman’s Right to Choose”.
Others saw no reason why drugs such as cannabis and LSD should be illegal. Pop stars, among many others, routinely flouted the law — which provided newspapers with a stream of sensational stories. The established media generally viewed their behaviour with horror and, judging by news reports, seemed to believe none of their readers (or, for that matter, their staff) would indulge in such things.
Supporters of "traditional" morality were also fighting a rearguard action against changing attitudes towards sex — a battle epitomised in 1971 by the prosecution of the "counter-culture" magazine Oz for obscenity which proved something of a watershed. During the six-week trial, supervised by a comically reactionary judge, a succession of celebrities testified in the magazine's defence but its three co-editors were initially found guilty and sentenced to jail terms. They were later cleared on appeal.
Disillusionment with the overall socio-political climate led to much exploration of “alternative” ways of living and working. The basic idea was that if people just sat back and waited for a revolution or the collapse of capitalism to bring about change they would probably be waiting for ever. Instead, they should initiate change at ground level by creating their desired future in the present.
In what might be regarded as a manifesto, the Liverpool magazine Openings set out a vision “in which the means and the end are morally indistinguishable, where change begins at the bottom and grows outwards, where what would normally be regarded as the objective [we] treat as a starting point: we aim to live out in the present, as far as possible, the future of freedom and co-operation”.
It went on to explain what this would mean in practice:
• It means making our own decisions and not taking it easy while someone else decides for us.
• It means respecting an environment in which other people (as well as animals and plants) have to live.
• It means working freely, producing for a need instead of for an artificially created market.
• It means consuming freely, buying what we want instead of what someone else wants us to buy.
• It also means education, real education, not soaking up facts but learning to think and do things for ourselves.
• Creative revolution doesn’t need votes or guns … All it needs to begin is a few people who decide to make it happen.
One notable example of attempting to “make it happen” was the experimentation in various forms of communal living — which for many meant going “back to nature” in the countryside. It arose partly from the hippy counter-culture of the 1960s but also heralded the start of an environmentalist movement: efforts to make communes self-sufficient contributed to the exploration of alternative technologies. Some communes also experimented with esoteric forms of religion — supposedly as practised in ancient pre-Christian Britain. There was an umbrella organisation called the Commune Movement, based in a remote Welsh farmhouse, but it lasted only a few years. It did, however, publish a fascinating magazine which revealed a huge range of ideas about communes and what they were seeking to achieve.
The other important strand in the quest for alternative ways of doing things concerned work. There were numerous examples during the 1970s of people in various trades and professions developing radical critiques of the work they did, and how they did it. Among their publications were Red Rat (“The Journal of Abnormal Psychologists”), ARSE (“Architects for a Really Socialist Environment”) and — for people who worked in computing — Real Time which asked: “Can we avoid becoming a new priesthood?” For the alternative press, the question of working methods had an immediate practical relevance: they were trying to organise the production of a newspaper and didn't want to replicate the organisational structure of conventional newspapers because they saw that as one of the mainstream media's problems.
One influential book at the time was “Small is Beautiful: a Study of Economics as if People Mattered” by the German-born economist E F Schumacher. Published in 1973, it was a critique of conventional economics and, in particular, the idea that bigger is better. The book also talked presciently about sustainable development, appropriate technology, and finite natural resources, with a warned that nature’s ability withstand pollution was not unlimited. Its main focus, though, was on the human dimension in economics. In a section discussing socialism, Schumacher wrote: “Socialists should insist on using the nationalised industries not simply to out-capitalise the capitalists — an attempt in which they may or may not succeed — but to evolve a more democratic and dignified system of industrial administration, a more humane employment of machinery, and a more intelligent utilisation of the fruits of human ingenuity and effort.”
Liverpool was home to a variety of “alternative” initiatives which formed a loose network and the origins of the Free Press lay partly in that social milieu. My own introduction to it came from two schoolteachers, John Cowan and Arnall Richards — both of them anarchists — who had set up a “free school” on Saturday mornings for children from Toxteth, one of the most deprived areas. It was very egalitarian and dispensed with the usual teacher/taught relationship. Teachers were not to be addressed as “Sir” or “Miss” and the children decided what to do in the class. After a few weeks acting in plays they turned their attention to cutting up small fish and examining them under a microscope. I visited the school one Saturday in the upstairs room of a workshop on the Dock Road and arrived to find about 20 children, mostly in their early-to-mid teens dancing to the song “Young, Gifted and Black”.
The workshop itself turned out to be another example of the city’s embryonic “alternative” society. Seven people worked there under the name Open Design (or sometimes Open Projects) and several of them also lived in a commune on Lilley Road. “The broad aim of our community,” one of them wrote, “is to forge our own way in the world without any coercion or exploitation and to encourage others to do the same in their own way or with us if they wish.” Six of them worked with wood, designing and making furniture.
The seventh member, Derek Massey, had a small litho printing press and, among other things, he printed Openings magazine, an offshoot from Open Design which survived for only two issues. The first one, in June 1970, was a deliberately eclectic mix of topics: complaints about the behaviour of Liverpool University’s disciplinary board and the problems local authorities were causing for gypsies, plus a feminist view on the marketing of vaginal deodorants. There were also gardening tips, a recipe for making your own yoghurt and a few humorous titbits such as the following disclaimer: “Mr John Cowan of the Liverpool Anarchist Group has asked us to point out that he has no connection with Mr John Cowan, chairman of the Police Federation’s constables section, who recently made an attack on ‘filthy, long-haired drop-outs’.”
I doubt that many people read Openings at the time, though it was later extensively quoted in a Leeds University PhD thesis about communes. Rob Rohrer and I wrote some of the content using pseudonyms and I also helped with the production. This was probably of some benefit when we started up the Free Press a few months later: the work for Openings, plus Pak-o-Lies and our role helping to establish the Tuebrook Bugle, we already had collective experience from several different kinds of alternative publication and were accustomed to working together.
There was a nucleus of four — me, Rob and Chris plus Derek, who had printed Pak-o-Lies and was also interested in writing. We were clearly going to need more people to help with the paper and also to act as its public face, since three of us would have to work for the Free Press secretly if we wanted to keep our jobs at the Post & Echo, so we invited a few friends to a planning meeting. There was Vincent Johnson, a nurse who had been active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament; John Garrett, a computer programmer who had been involved in an anarchist paper in Swansea; and Barbara Gould, a peace activist who had helped distribute Pak-o-Lies.
The first few meetings were taken up discussing how we would handle various hypothetical situations — for example if the fascist National Front submitted a letter for publication. We eventually realised the discussion was leading nowhere and decided that such questions could be put aside for the time being and resolved later if and when they arose.
After that we got down to practicalities. Each member was asked to look into an aspect of production and report back. We wanted the pages in the Free Press to be roughly the size of those in the Daily Mirror. That was too big for Derek’s press, so we had to find another printer.
The Tuebrook Bugle was selling 2,000 copies without difficulty in a small area, so we thought we could probably sell twice as many copies of the Free Press across the whole city. Several newsagents said they would accept copies on sale or return for the standard discount of 25 per cent. We could also get people to sell to their friends and neighbours or at work, and sell copies ourselves in pubs and on the street. The first issue cost £105 to print, plus £20 for use of the typesetting machine — £125 in all. Five of us donated £25 to pay the first bill. The Free Press would sell at 4p, the usual price of newspapers at the time. If we sold all the copies we would get back £120, allowing for the 25 per cent discount.
For a long time we had no office. The first issue of the paper was produced mainly in Chris’s flat. We used Vincent Johnson’s home as the address for mail and phone calls — until his wife got fed up answering when he was out. After several changes of address we eventually got a room — rent-free — above News From Nowhere, a radical bookshop which opened in 1974.
Working undercover for the Free Press (and earlier for Pak-o-Lies) while employed by the Post and Echo was a weird experience. The most puzzling part was that I hadn’t been summoned by Sir Alick or one of his minions and ordered to clear my desk and leave the building. There was no sign of a witch hunt though I did get wind that my name had cropped up in office speculation. One lunchtime I had visited Derek at his workshop on the Dock Road — the address used by Pak-o-Lies and, for a time, by the Free Press. The Echo’s features editor, who happened to be driving past at the time, had seen me going into the building and told colleagues about it when he returned to the office.
After the first few issues of the Free Press I decided to leave the Post and Echo. I lined up some freelance work which would be enough to live on while allowing me to spend more time on the Free Press. A few minutes after handing in my notice George Cregeen — by then editor of the Echo — appeared in the features department where I was working. Looking more cheerful than I had ever seen him, he called across the room: “I hear you are leaving us, Brian. Are you going to work for the Free Press?”
Leaflet announcing the arrival of the Free Press.
Click to enlarge.
A Free Press sticker.
A different sort of journalism
Choosing a name for the new paper proved surprisingly straightforward. Rob had a collection of underground/alternative papers from the United States and one that interested us particularly was the Los Angeles Free Press. Founded in 1964, it had built up a large circulation (100,000 at its peak) and made a point of tackling issues and stories that the city's mainstream paper, the LA Times, wouldn't touch. That was what we had in mind when we talked about starting “a free press” in Liverpool. As we talked about it more, “a” became “the” and before long we were talking about the Liverpool Free Press.
“Free Press” was a fairly common name for newspapers — both mainstream and alternative — so it didn’t automatically categorise us as either. We might have opted for a more strikingly “alternative” name, as we had done with Pak-o-Lies, but we wanted the new paper to attract a wide readership. It had to be the sort that people could read on a bus without other passengers thinking they were weird. No less importantly, “Free Press” was also the name that came closest to what we saw as the paper’s main mission: reporting news that would otherwise be ignored. We reinforced that idea with a slogan on the front page saying “News you're not supposed to know”, and a note in the first issue explained:
“News is what other people don't want you to read. The Liverpool Free Press has been started by a group of people who want to print that news. On Merseyside there are plenty of stories that are never revealed, for there is a newspaper monopoly — the Post and Echo — that is quite happy to ignore it ...
“The Free Press will aim at providing a radical alternative newspaper. But we aren't affiliated to any political party. We don't have one political line that we want you to subscribe to.
“As well as reporting police abuses, planning fiddles, Corporation incompetence and the suppression of news, we will be giving a voice to those who are denied a platform for their views ... community groups, trade unionists, schoolchildren gipsies, the coloured community. In a phrase — the people of Liverpool.
“We need to know what you think and what you are doing. And we need your support if you want the Liverpool Free Press to keep coming out each month.”
Other people variously described the Free Press as “libertarian”, “broad left” or simply “left-wing”. We didn’t complain though we generally resisted attempts to label it ourselves. In the initial stages we had discussed whether to refer to the paper as “socialist” but rejected the idea — not because of any objections to socialism but because “socialist” had so many possible connotations that it was likely to confuse more people than it enlightened.
This resistance to labelling probably paid off. Some time later, when we printed an article arguing against the sale of council houses, a member of the Communist Party told us people where he worked had read the article and discussed it. He added that the party’s newspaper, the Morning Star, had made similar arguments but its articles went unread.
The Free Press was far from apolitical but we saw it primarily as a journalistic project, telling readers: “We do not pretend, like the established press, to be ‘neutral’ or ‘objective’. The politics of the Free Press are contained, largely, in what we choose to report.”
We didn’t see it as our job to say what should be done politically. Our role as journalists was to provide facts and pose questions so that readers could work out their own solutions: “We want the Free Press to be useful to people struggling for control over their own lives — as well as providing information about the sort of people who actually do have control over them.”
The word “useful” was important because it gave us a rule of thumb for deciding which stories were worth writing about. It eliminated the sort of stories often found in the tabloid press — about the private lives of celebrities, for example — which served only to entertain their readers. “Useful” stories, on the other hand, alerted people to things we thought they should know about — and possibly act upon. Some reported on local activism, others on the activities of those in power.
Our investigations and exposés were the sort of story that tended to attract most attention, though there was nothing intrinsically "alternative" about them: they were written and researched in a similar way to investigations found in mainstream newspapers. The main difference was in their purpose. The targets of the popular press were often those too small or weak to hit back: “scroungers”, “agitators”, "migrants", etc, but ours were those with power, wealth or influence: public figures who used power for their own ends, who preached one thing and did another, who made people suffer and profited by it. We took on local MPs and councillors, bureaucrats, the police, and big business. Of course, the mainstream press did that sometimes too but the aim of the Free Press's exposés was not so much to clean up public life as to show it didn't pay to trust those in authority.
Surprisingly, considering how ingrained belief in the need for “objectivity” is, our attitude was rarely questioned by readers. Some described the Free Press as “speaking up for working people” or even as “the paper that tells the truth”. We had only two letters accusing us of “bias”. This was one of them:
“I have just read the Liverpool Free Press with great interest. I was impressed with contents of your newspaper particularly with regard to the exposure of council’s corruption. However I do think your views are one-sided. I did not read anything about work people who don’t play fair. A recent example of corporation workers playing golf during working hours. I am sure there are many such other examples. I would certainly read your paper if you played fair to both sides.” — A Matthews and E S Cross, Ward G12, Whiston General Hospital.
And we replied:
"If readers want information about 'work people' who don’t 'play fair' they will have to get it elsewhere. They shouldn’t find it difficult. Newspapers are willing enough to carry stories about idle workers, social security fiddlers, shoplifters, etc. The Free Press does not regard this sort of behaviour as particularly newsworthy. In a society of winners and losers, it’s not at all surprising that some of the losers hit back now and again. It may not be playing the game, but who said the rules were fair to start with?
“The Free Press takes an interest in a different group of people: The people at the top, the winners, those who want us to carry on playing their game, while often breaking the rules themselves. We do this because when politicians, businessmen or policemen break the rules, a lot of us are affected. Yet, strangely, our marvellous 'free press' don’t seem so interested ... So, in a sense, our coverage has to be one-sided. We have chosen our side. And that’s what it comes down to in the end.”
This is not to say that we always felt obliged to take sides. There were some issues where we needed to reflect differences of opinion among our core readers, for example in council tenants' protests aganst rent rises where some groups favoured a total rent strike while others were merely withholding the increase.
Ironically, it was one attempt to sit on the fence that provoked the strongest reaction we ever had from readers. We had published a story about a privately-run clinic which was charging women extortionate sums for abortions. Since the clinic was not legally allowed to advertise it had set up a "pregnancy advisory bureau" which directed clients to the clinic without making them aware of other, less expensive options.
Unusually, the story met with approval from both pro- and anti-abortion campaigners — the anti-abortionists because they opposed abortion in general and the pro-abortionists because the clinic put abortions beyond the pocket of many women.
Apparently prompted by our story, the anti-abortion Society for the Protection of Unborn Children booked an advertisement in the next issue of the Free Press announcing a "mass rally" they were due to hold in Liverpool.
We were unsure whether to accept the ad but saw no particular reason to reject it. One consideration was that plans for the rally were already well known and pro-abortion activists had indirectly helped to publicise it by announcing a counter-demonstration. Eventually we settled on what seemed to be a compromise: we printed the ad with a short news item above it giving details of two pro-abortion events. That, though, was not enough to prevent the rumpus that followed.
A few days after the paper was printed some copies had gone out to the shops but most were still stacked up in bundles in the front room of the house where Derek, Chris and I were living. Towards midnight we got an anonymous phone call saying the Women's Liberation group were on their way to seize them.
We hurriedly hid bundles in cupboards, under beds and under the stairs but a couple of thousand copies still in the front room when the door bell rang. There were about a dozen women outside. They asked to come in and discuss the advert - and on that basis Derek let them in.
In the meantime I had barricaded myself in the front room with the papers, taking out the lightbulb and shoving a table against the door. Someone on the other side tried to open the door and when the women found it didn't open easily, about six of them heaved and burst in. There was no light in the room but they drew back the curtains and a street lamp shone in. Then they opened the window and passed the papers to others outside who loaded them into a car.
We were alarmed to hear that the group were discussing whether to destroy them but a few days later they were returned with the anti-abortion advert partially obliterated and a leaflet inserted about "A woman's right to choose". Although the incident was very unpleasant at the time, it blew over fairly quickly and we ended up on amicable terms.
The obliterated advert and the inserted leaflet. (Click to enlarge)
There were plenty of other occasions, though, where the paper adopted a clear position based on the available facts — and was vindicated. One example was our report that 300 workers at the Bear Brand hosiery factory were about to lose their jobs because the firm had been refused a £500,000 government loan. The information had come from an impeccable source and we decided not to ask the company to comment. Since we had no doubt the story was true, we saw no point in weakening it by inviting denials in order to give an impression of "balanced" reporting as the mainstream media often did.
Bear Brand's managing director was furious when the story appeared and spent more than 20 minutes shouting at us over the phone, denying that the company had been refused the loan. We told him he was wrong, but said we would print a letter if he wrote one. The letter arrived:
“I note with a great deal of dissatisfaction your article concerning this company in the recent issue of your paper. My dissatisfaction is very fairly founded in that there is not one paragraph in your article that is accurate and that by publishing errors and misleading information, it can do nothing but make matters much more difficult for management to manage.
“From the structure of the latter part of the article it is apparent that you have no understanding of business and might I therefore suggest that you appreciate the circumstances in running a business before endeavouring to comment on it.
“I am pleased to say that our employees here are aware of the extension in trade which has taken place and the situation that surrounds this company now is the build-up into a viable entity which is the totally opposite extreme of the company which required money to meet the losses that you refer to last year.” — Mervyn E Smith, Managing Director, Bear Brand Ltd.
Two weeks later the firm went bust and the workers lost their jobs.