Dispelling the myth that whitechapel anarchists are knuckle dragging lumpen scum (Well maybe a little) we have decided to compile a recommended reading list. Basically a load of our favourite books. It’s not all “pure” anarchism. But then neither are we.
This list is in no order at all. Completely random. I mean, we are against hierachy and all that.
How many have you read? What do you recommend?
“The Making Of The English Working Class” E.P Thompson
“Workers Power” Maurice Brinton
“Bash The Rich” Ian Bone
“Anti-Fascist” Martin Lux
“43 Group” Morris Beckman
“The World Turned Upside Down” Christopher Hill
“King Mob” Christopher Hibbert
“The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” Robert Tressell
“East End Chronicles” Ed Glinert
“People Of The Abyss” Jack London
“Villains Of All Nations” Marcus Rediker
“The Makhnovist Movement” Peter Arshinov
“Zapata Of Mexico” Peter Newell
“The Bonnot Gang” Richard Parry
“Unfinished Business” Class War
“The Many Headed Hydra” Peter Linebaugh & Marcus Rediker
“East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914” William Fishman
“The Houndsditch Murders” Donald Rumbelow
“Ballymurphy And The Irish War” Ciaran De Baroid
“From Hell” Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell
“Bandit Country: The IRA and South Armagh” Toby Harnden
“The Jungle” Upton Sinclair
“The Invented Traditions” Eric Hobsbawn
“Decade Of Disorder” Class War
“No Retreat” Steve Tilzey & Dave Hann
“The English Rebels” Charles Poulsen
“Rebels Against The Future” Kirkpatrick Sale
“Dynamite: Class Violence In America” Louis Adamic
“Doom Patrol” Grant Morrison
“White Chapell, Scarlet Tracings” Iain Sinclair
Whitechapel Anarchist Group 
what about “Granny Made Me An Anarchist” by Stuart Christie, fantastic book from north of the border….
recommended listening…
Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980)
The Medium is the Massage
Side A Side B
free mp3
http://www.ubu.com/sound/mcluhan.html
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
Live from Death Row, Death Blossoms, Faith of our Fathers, and We Want Freedom by Mumia Abu-Jamal
My Life is my Sun Dance by Leonard Peltier
25 Years on the MOVE by the MOVE organisation
Rasta and Resitance by Horace Campbell (*note: while I recommend this book I will say I don’t entirely agree with its analysis nor with certain generalisations made in it*)
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, The History of the Guyanese Working Class part one, and The Groundings with my Brothers by Dr. Walter Rodney
…and who said it had to be all non-fiction: last but not least, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin.
And let me throw in one more fiction, just because it’s one of the greatest fucking books I’ve ever, ever, ever read in my life and I can’t imagine anyone with a brain cell to spare reading it and not thinking the same:
Half of a Yellow Sun by the best writer in the world, AKA Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Everything else by her as well, but that’s the super-classic.
Check out The 15th Round by Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter. Facinating insight into prison life during mid 60’s and 70’s in America.
“Endgame: The Problem of Civilisation Vol 1” Derrick Jenson for why, realistically, we’re probably fucked.
“Down with the Empire, Up with the Spring” Anon. (Do or Die, Issue 10) for, realistically, how we can try to stop getting too fucked.
By the way, ment to come down for May Day must have been a laugh…. Alcohol & drugs taking a negative affect on Cambridge Anarchists ability to do f a. Plus whenever I cum to babylon central I get fucking nicked!
Where’s any identity politics stuff? You bang on about the class war, what about the wars against racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, homphobia?
All those books are by men too, and I’m guessing mostly white men.
Sort it out.
Kirsty feel free to recomend some good books on those subjects and we will add them the list.
Arsinov’s “hostory of the maknovist movement” is indeed a great book in a sense that it shows why we shouldnt trust parties and organisations that call themselves revolutionarues and paradoxically support a statist/authoritarian ideology and that people are free only when they govern themselves. Another book that shows that statism and authoritarianism are incompatible with a revolutionary movement is Vernon Richards’ “lessons of the spanish revolution” which is a well written critique of the spanish anarchist movement during the “civil war”.
‘I and Thou’ by Martin Buber
How late it was how late…
James Kelman
Cop gets punched in the first seen. Kelman is the best working class anarchist writer since…erm???
You need some Colin Ward there!
How about Ground Control by Anna Minton?
Emma Goldman – My Disillusionment in Russia
Raoul Vaneigem – The Revolution of Everyday Life
And, fitting to the recent events: S.I. – On the Poverty of Student Life
Man, Economy and State – Murray Rothbard
Linebaugh – The London Hanged, (Penguin, 1993). Who decides what’s a crime? Highwaymen, silk weavers, Tyburn & Newgate. 400 odd pages of interesting things you never knew before.
Written In flames – Naming the British Ruling Class; (I-Spy/Hooligan) Mine is well out of date & I don’t know whether there’s been a more recent edition, (hint hint)
Hasek; The Good Soldier Sveik; (Heinemann/Penguin). My hero of heroes.
Walter Mosley; Walking the Dog; (Serpent’s Tail). Mosley rightly got stick for turning Easy Rawlins into a slum landlord. This is the antidote.
James Kelman; A Chancer; (Picador 1987). Still my favourite Kelman.
And finally a cookery book: Isabel Allende, Aphrodite – the love of food & the food of love. Says rude things about broccoli.
Derrick Jensen’s Endgame (vol 1 and 2) are a must – anything by J Lovelock as to why its fucked ecologically and what’s in store from a global eco perspective, and lastly, if you can get it, Ecodefense: A field guide to Monkeywrenching by foreman and haywood for the practicalities of fighting back.
@ Libertarian:
Murray Rothbard, eh? I’m not too fussed on his pro-peado stuff in the Ethics of Liberty:
“In short, we must face the fact that the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children.”
“Parents would be able to sell their trustee-rights in children to anyone who wished to buy them at any mutually agreed price.”
– Murray Rothbard, The ethics of liberty, p103-104