The trial of “The Stoke Newington Eight” was, at the time, the longest criminal trial in British history. The defendants were charged with conspiracy in connection with a string of terrorist acts between 1968 and 1971, including the machine-gunning of the Spanish Embassy in London, the bombing of a BBC van at the Miss World contest, and the bombings of the homes of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the Attorney General, and the Minister of Employment. Responsibility was claimed in communiqués from a group calling themselves “The Angry Brigade”. Police investigators had to acquaint themselves rapidly with Britain’s anarchist groups and Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle.
Gordon Carr’s The Angry Brigade was first published in 1975, based on his BBC documentary: now it is republished with extra materials, including a preface by John Barker, one of the convicted (“in my case, the police really had framed a guilty man”) and the anarchist Stuart Christie, who was acquitted. It gives the historical, political and theoretical background to the bombings; and it deals sympathetically with both the defendants and the police. The extraordinary trial, in which several of the highly educated young anarchists and libertarians in the dock chose to defend themselves, and did so ably, ended with a jury compromise; four were acquitted altogether, and a plea for clemency was made on behalf of the other four, who received ten-year sentences.
The Angry Brigade cannot be compared with organizations such as the Baader-Meinhof gang or the Red Brigades; looking at the chronology provided at the back of Carr’s book, one is struck by how mild Britain’s experience of home-grown terrorist dissent was. No one was killed. The targets were primarily symbolic. Those convicted had spent much of their time helping benefits claimants and fighting for better housing in their local communities. (One of the acquitted now has an OBE.) This fascinating and diligent book recreates an extraordinary yet often forgotten episode in Britain’s political history.