|
I've been a hack for almost the whole of my adult life. When I was eighteen I
edited a church-based newsletter called Thinks.... Religious content
closely approximated zero (Church of England, you know). Thinks...
started as a single sheet and rapidly grew to six pages; the final issue was
eight pages, including a full-page article on anarchism, which I
had just discovered. I only mention it for the sake of including a picture of
me at 18.
Some time in the early eighties I came across Lobster. Starting out as a magazine of parapolitics (the study of the informal structures and pressures underlying formal politics - in other words, what you get if you do conspiracy theory properly), Lobster has become an important, intelligently sceptical, contributor to the study of contemporary history and politics. Its utter disrespect for New Labour is only one of its virtues. I write for it about once every other year. Lobster led me to Tribune and New Statesman and Society, for both of which I wrote book reviews in the early 90s. Politically both magazines were pretty solidly social-democratic & Old Labour, with some leanings towards post-60s libertarian socialism on the part of the NSS. Tribune's still going, although it's harder to find these days; NSS no longer exists. I've since written a couple of book reviews for the Independent. From 1988 to 1993 I was involved in something called the Socialist Society; it had been in decline for some time when I left, and disappeared completely soon afterwards. The Society had a rather fine magazine called Catalyst, which I wrote for a couple of times. At the meeting where the decision to close Catalyst was taken, somebody suggested that we should keep the magazine going and close down the Society instead. Not such a bad idea, in retrospect. Cross the Socialist Society with the Old Labour Left and what you get - or got - is the Socialist Movement. (Which is still around, although it's now trading as the Centre for Democratic Policy-Making.) The Socialist Movement briefly had a fortnightly newspaper, socialist. After several 'launch issues', socialist hit the streets in 1991; it lasted until the end of 1992. For much of that time I was its Books Editor - an unpaid job whose main benefit was being provided with a truly huge number of new books, some of which I still haven't admitted to myself I'm never going to read. The linear descendant of socialist is Red Pepper, a monthly magazine launched in 1994. From September 1998 to November 2000 I was its Culture Editor. The terms and conditions were almost identical to those of the old Books Editor job, although it did also give me the opportunity to write a couple of these articles, and to introduce a startled world to the idea that folk music was not necessarily right-on. Two magazines I've been particularly proud to be associated with are Casablanca and Here and Now. Casablanca was a magazine like no other: unashamedly radical, both politically and artistically; instinctively internationalist, with a stress on excluded and minority voices; viciously polemical, beautiful to look at and often very funny. This seems to be the only mark it's left on the Web. Here and Now, produced by radical groups in Leeds and Glasgow, started from more or less post-situationist positions; in more recent years it developed a lucid and intransigent critique of managerialism in all its forms. "Management reserves the right to spoil your life to meet your needs." Here and Now appears once every so often. Like Casablanca, Here and Now also has the signal merit of having published one of my short stories. I've also written for Private Eye a couple of times. And I had a short story published in the old New Statesman - but that was in another century, and besides, the magazine is dead. At the beginning of 1996 I finally started writing for a living, courtesy of a magazine called NEWS/400.uk. I was its editor for three years; for the last one I also edited a Windows NT magazine, NTexplorer. Which was fun. Three years was plenty, and at the beginning of 1999 I left to go freelance. I contributed to NTexplorer before its untimely demise at the end of 1999, and continue to write for NEWS/400.uk, now trading as iSeries NEWS UK. I've also written for Computing and IT Week, among others. "WebWords", my WebSphere column in e-Pro magazine, recently received an award from the ASBPE. Finally, a couple of magazines I'm not personally involved in - which are also the only two periodicals I invariably read cover to cover. The LRB doesn't need any introduction; for myself, I devour it every [check publishing frequency - Ed.]. I firmly intend to write for it one day, when I'm not too busy. I can also strongly recommend Magonia, whose project of "interpreting contemporary vision and belief" goes far beyond the UFO-watching milieu from which it emerged. Last updated: 29th June 2004 |
Home Politics Debord Music Pictures Amroth |
| Top of page |
