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Angry of Stoke Newingtonby Anne Beech
Some nine months later, in May 1972, the four - now joined by four others and collectively if somewhat unimaginatively known as the Stoke Newington Eight (at one stage, in an almost Malthusian expansion, the total had risen to ten) - were charged with conspiring to commit 25 bomb attacks throughout Britain over a period of nearly four years. One target had been local: a branch of Barclay’s Bank in Stoke Newington High Street, now more familiar as the Stoke Newington Book Shop, was bombed on 26 October 1970. Inconveniently for the police, the bombings continued even after the trial was underway The trial itself lasted 109 days, and involved over 200 witnesses for the prosecution, 688 exhibits and more than 1000 pages of evidence - Britain’s biggest ever conspiracy trial. At the end of the trial, in which the prosecution’s charges were met with defense counterclaims that the Amhurst Road evidence had been planted by the police, that the forensic evidence offered in support of a conspiracy was inconclusive - if not fundamentally flawed or possibly even fabricated - and that no incontrovertible proof had been offered of any real conspiracy, charges against four of the defendants were dropped. In a majority verdict, the jury found the original Amhurst Four guilty of both conspiracy and possession. Creek, Mendelson, Barker and Greenfield were sentenced to ten-year jail terms for conspiracy, to run concurrently with fifteen-year sentences for possession. In his summing up, the judge observed that political trials did not happen in Britain, and reminded the jurors that the Crown case did not have to prove that any of the defendants had actually bombed anything - only that they had conspired to do so.
Who or what were the Angry Brigade? Who did they represent? And why were they considered so important at the time? Opinions and theories differ - now and then. For many on the left they were the innocent victims of an explicitly political show trial - genuine class warriors fighting heavy-handed state oppression. To others, they were misguided, self-styled ‘urban guerrillas’, the ‘big-head brigade’ of university drop-outs with no agenda and no legitimate revolutionary credentials. In the eyes of the prosecution, they were but the tip of a post-68 revolutionary iceberg that threatened to destabilise and ultimately overthrow the democratically elected government of the day a government, it should be remembered, that was facing concerted opposition to plans for a new Industrial Relations Bill, and more than a little discontent. A turning point or a footnote to history? Even with 20/20 hindsight, the jury is still out - but in their opposition to the establishment they are at least a link in a long Stoke Newington history. N16 readers who would like to know more about the Angry Brigade should read Anarchy in the UK: The Angry Brigade, written by Tom Vague and published by the excellent AK Press in 1997- I’ve drawn heavily on it for this piece. If any N16 readers were involved in the claimants’ unions or squats in and around Stoke Newington at any point in the last 30 years, and want to tell their stories, we’d be interested in hearing from you.
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On 20 August 1971, just after four in the
afternoon, eight of the Met’s finest burst through the door of a ‘dingy first
floor flat’ (Daily Express - although, according to other sources, it was the
top-floor flat) at 395 Amhurst Road arrested the four occupants - Anna Mendelson, Jim
Greenfield, John Barker and Hilary Creek - and took away, amongst other things, quantities
of gelignite, a sten gun, a Beretta, detonators, a duplicator and a John Bullprinting set
The Stoke Newington Four - otherwise known as the Angry Brigade - had been nicked. Yet
again, Stoke Newington was in the news - and yet again, it seemed, for all the wrong
reasons. 