I have now scanned all of the copies of Hackney Peoples Press kindly donated to me by former HPP staffer Charles Foster.
These are all available as free PDFs (and other formats such as epub) on archive.org.
Charles also granted me a really interesting interview about his time working on HPP which gives some fascinating context:
I hope that the scans are a useful resource for others – they have been absolutely invaluable for this site – I have added some links to a few posts below that are all the better for HPP content.
Alongside the hardcore coverage of social and political issues, these 96 editions of Peoples Press tell us other stories about the Hackney’s evolution from the 1970s to the 1980s. Each issue has events listings, reviews and adverts that are fascinating social history also:
These all capture a particular moment in time, which should be celebrated but we should also avoid wallowing in nostalgia too much. It is easy to bemoan the lack of a radical edge to the Hackney Citizen or the Hackney Gazette in 2023 – but for better or worse we live in less radical times, and the local newspaper industry is dying on its arse.
It’s not all doom and gloom though and I was pleased to see that the new Hackney Anarchist Group have produced a nifty little fanzine to go alongside their table full of free literature:
Here is a handful of previous posts on this blog using Hackney Peoples Press stories:
The Radical History of Hackney 