The Stoke Newington 8 Defence Group was an organisation set up in 1971 in solidarity with the eight people arrested in connection with the Angry Brigade bombings. This post looks at the activities of the defence group through its publications.
During 1971 and 1972 dozens, if not hundreds, of people were raided or arrested in connection with the Angry Brigade bombings of targets as diverse as a BBC van outside the Miss World competition/meat market, Barclays Bank in Stoke Newington, the Department of Employment and Productivity (the day after a big protest against the Tory Industrial Relations Bill), the homes of two cabinet Ministers, the building hosting the Metropolitan Police’s new computer, and fashionable clothing boutique Biba. Nobody was killed or seriously injured as a result of these bombings.
Jake Prescott was the first to have his collar felt, in February 1971. The following December he was sentenced to 15 years, for conspiracy to cause explosions – i.e. his handwriting on some envelopes used to send the Angry Brigade’s eviscerating communiques.
Ian Purdie was arrested in March 1971, but later acquitted. There are a few scans of posters and leaflets from the Ian Purdie and Jake Prescott Defence campaign here.
Speaking to the Guardian from his Hackney home in 2002, Jake reflected:
“‘As the only working-class member, I was not surprised to be the first in and last out of prison. When I look back on it, I was the one who was angry and the people I met were more like the Slightly Cross Brigade.”
The most high profile arrests took place in August 1971, including the notorious raid on 359 Amhurst Road, Stoke Newington. The accused would become known as the Stoke Newington 8:
- John Barker
- Chris Bott
- Stuart Christie
- Hilary Creek
- Jim Greenfield
- Kate McLean
- Anna Mendelssohn
- Angela Weir
(Weir went on to be Angela Mason, who rose to fame as director of the LGBT rights charity Stonewall.)
It’s worth pointing out that a number of other raids and arrests happened before, during and after August 1971.
An extensive defence campaign was swiftly organised, which John Barker characterised as:
“the Stoke Newington 8 Defence Committee which, not uncommonly, was more interesting than the Angry Brigade itself, a widely-based, politically creative organisation of very different people.”
I’ve made a number of scans of SN8 Defence Group material available at archive.org
An early poster summarising the charges – and pointing out that the bombings had continued after the arrests. (Scan courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham).
Conspiracy Notes issue 4, a 16 page booklet with a useful chronology of events. (This also scanned by Sparrows Nest). This also contains some examples of the Angry Brigade’s infamous communiques claiming responsibility for bombings:
I’ve previously transcribed a copy of Stoke Newington 8 Defence Group: A Political Statement, which seems to have been published at some point between February and May 1972:
There is also PDF of that here. This is a rallying call in defence of the arrestees that sets the trial in the wider political context of repression of the time:
“If we are to survive as a movement, we need to do more than just mouth polite phrases of support and outrage in the underground columns as one of us is sent down for fifteen years: this is what happened to Jake. We cannot shout in defence of comrades who are political prisoners in other corners of the world while remaining blind to the fact that eight brothers and sisters, after a year of imprisonment and house arrest will be appearing alone in the dock at the Old Bailey in June in a confrontation with the state, that is, unless we say:
that those who are captured are a part of us — they have our total support.
that those the state accuses of political offences belong to our movement which itself, and itself alone, is responsible for its actions.“
If You Want Peace Prepare For War is a longer document, also from 1972 which I’ve typed up here and scanned as a PDF here. It was also republished in 2020 by See Red Press recently, with a new introduction I had some mixed feelings about. If You Want Peace is more confrontational in tone than the Political Statement above:
“What happened to Prescott, and what is in danger of happening to the SN8, cannot be dismissed as isolated acts of repression against maverick sections of the left. The present large-scale operations of persecution which have been going on for the past two years only make sense as an exercise in CONTAINMENT. They are intended as a deterrent against any sort of active resistance undertaken by people on the left, inside or outside left parties.”
The trial of the Stoke Newington 8 concluded on December 6th 1972. It had been the longest criminal trial in British legal history. The outcome was as follows:
- John Barker (10 years)
- Chris Bott (acquitted)
- Stuart Christie (acquitted)
- Hilary Creek (10 years)
- Jim Greenfield (10 years)
- Kate McLean (acquitted)
- Anna Mendelssohn (10 years)
- Angela Weir (acquitted)
Jake Prescott’s sentence was also reduced to 10 years at this point.
The campaign did not stop there. The Stoke Newington 8 Defence Group organised a march on Wormwood Scrubs ten days after the trial concluded:
(PDF of this here)
(Dan Taylor states that the SN8 Defence Group had previously organised a march to Brixton Prison on 4th September 1971).
The SN8 Defence Group then seemed to exist alongside The Stoke Newington Five Solidarity Committee and continued to support the convicted whilst in prison:
This document is available here as a PDF.
Campaigning for people who have been convicted is a harder job than when they are on trial. Release The Five makes a number of valid points though:
- None of the five werre actually convicted of the bombings. They were convicted on charges of “conspiring to cause explosions likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property”, which isn’t the same thing. (For example Jake Prescott being convicted of addressing some some envelopes in which communiques were posted).
- The sentences were much more severe than those handed out to people convicted of racist and fascist bombings during the same period.
- The four acquittals showed that the police work was questionable in many instances:
“The unsatisfactory nature of the verdicts was also demonstrated іп the acquittal of Stuart Christie on all possession charges, thus strongly implying that the jury believed he had been planted with detonators by the same police officers that it is claimed planted Amhurst Road.”
Christie was for a time the most famous anarchist in the UK, having been jailed in Spain for his part in a plot to assassinate fascist dictator General Franco. He died in 2020 and there is a useful online archive dedicated to him at Mayday Rooms which includes over 100 pages of press cuttings about the Angry Brigade trial.
The Stoke Newington Five Solidarity Committee was based at 54 Harcombe Road, London N16.
“The Stoke Newington Defence Group” organised a “teach-in” about the trial and the prisoners in February 1973. Acquitted defendants from the case were due to attend…
Those convicted served a varying number of years in prison. John Barker later reflected:
“In 1971-72 I was convicted in the Angry Brigade trial and spent 7 years in jail. In my case, the police framed a guilty man.”
Conversely Anna Mendleson continued to maintain her innocence. According to Wikipedia she was:
“quietly released on parole in November 1976, just four years after the end of the trial. Her father gave an interview to BBC Radio explaining that prison had had a terrible effect on her, making it impossible for her to concentrate. He also said that she had taken no part in the bombings and that she and the other defendants were ‘good young people’ who tried to help others.”
Dan Taylor suggests that people involved with the Stoke Newington.8 Defence Group continued to work in similar fields:
“Members of the defence group would become involved in the Up Against the Law collective with several publications over 1972-75, and involvement in other justice campaigns, like the ‘Free George Ince’ and ‘Free George Davis’ campaigns (the latter memorably sabotaging The Ashes of 1975 by destroying the turf at Headingley), as well as assisting the work of PROP [Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners] and the Claimants Unions.”
Inevitably the Stoke Newington 8 Defence Group came to the attention of Spycops, but as far as I am aware, there is no evidence of actual infiltration of the group. Indeed the closest seems to be attending the December 16th march and an undercover officer picking up some literature at a feminst meeting:
Having cited the Angry Brigade as one of her true targets, she was asked about her reporting on them.
Davies had reported attending a women’s liberation conference in 1972. She wrote that one woman associated with the Angry Brigade gave out copies of their ‘Conspiracy Notes’. The ‘Stoke Newington 8’ – a group of people facing serious charges connected with the Angry Brigade – were reaching out to other radical groups at the time for support.
The meeting was reported as chaotic, with calls for better structure to the discussion being heckled by Gay Liberation Front activists.
That appears to be the extent of her reporting on the Angry Brigade.
testimony of former Spycop “Sandra Davies” to the Undercover Policing Inquiry 26 January 2021,- SUMMARISED by CAMPAIGN opposing police surveillance
Sources and further reading
- The John Barker quotes in this article are all from his excellent review of Tom Vague’s book on the Angry Brigade. This remains one of the best things to read on the subject. There is a great two part interview with him by Working Class History podcast too.
- A previous post on this blog covers books on the Angry Brigade / Stoke Newington 8.
- A slightly exasperated/exhausted Hilary Creek and Anna Mendelssohn were interviewed (in a prison garden?) for a World In Action documentary, first broadcast on the day after the trial finished. It is currently on Youtube here.
- The Angry Brigade: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Britain’s First Urban Guerilla Group is a feature length documentary first broadcast in January 1973. It is currently on Youtube here. It includes interviews with people involved with the SN8 Defence Group at the 32 and 47 minutes mark.
- Look Back In Anger – Guardian interview with Jake Prescott and Hilary Creek from 2002.
- Jake Prescott obituary from 2009.
- Dan Taylor – Not that Serious? The Investigation and Trial of the Angry Brigade, 1967-1972. Open University thesis
- An interesting interview with Tony Swash, who was involved in the defence campaign and who had also been convicted of politically motivated firebombings in the early 1970s.
- All the previous posts here about the Angry Brigade and the Stoke Newington 8 can be found via the Angry Brigade tag.
If you were involved with the defence campaign or have access to any other documents of interest, please leave a comment or get in touch…
Let’s finish with a song from Hackney’s finest squatter punks The Apostles:
The Radical History of Hackney 