THE NORWICH RADICAL IN 2022

by The Norwich Radical team

This past year was trying in different ways than the first two of this new decade, but no less keenly felt for that. The pandemic – not over, not yet, probably not for a long time – has whittled down everyone’s immune systems, patience, well-being and welfare. It has also been exploited as a means to pass more authoritarian policies into effect, in the UK and elsewhere.

In our country alone, as our co-editor Rowan Gavin wrote in July, “unelected and corrupt powers continue to wield violence in the name of policing, and continue to roam our streets [as they] regurgitate bigotries that were once only voiced in public by fundamentalists and neo-fascists.” The cost of living, coupled with inflation and profit-mongering, has meant a cold, hungry winter for many.

And yet, Rowan pointed out, we “return every time to the communities of people that resist these cruel forces, today and the next day and the day after.” We return to organise where we can, find reasons to celebrate when we can, and endeavour to have as much fun as we can along the way.

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THE NORWICH RADICAL IN 2021

by The Norwich Radical team

If we’ve learned one thing at The Norwich Radical this year, it’s that solidarity is our strongest tool. It has been for the past year, and it will continue to be for the year just started.

Solidarity is what is keeping most of us going on this fascist little island, filled with transphobia and xenophobia; this island in which the government is enacting destructive and violent repression of migration, of self affirmation, of any form of protest; this island in which the media and arts establishment are complicit instigators of a mental and physical retreat to the dying nightmare of empire and colonisation.

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THE NORWICH RADICAL IN 2019

by Alex Valente

2019 is drawing to a close, but the turmoil and trauma of this turbulent year show no signs of abating. As we wrote on the cold, miserable and particularly unfortunate morning of Friday the 13th,

in the coming months and years, many in this country and elsewhere will suffer under a Tory government led by a racist liar. Social services will be dismembered. Workers’ rights will be eroded. Vulnerable people will face violence at the hands of increasingly aggressive immigration authorities and police. All of which will be sanctioned, incited, and protected by the country’s highest authorities and institutions.

The turn of a decade is an important time to review, to remember what the good fight is actually about, and what type of work is expected from us, as people, as a community, as a society.Continue Reading

FIVE NORWICH BANDS TO WATCH IN 2019

by Rowan Gavin

It’s been a great year for music in East Anglia’s Finest City. If you’re a gig-goer, you’ll no doubt have come across some of the many up-and-coming Norwich and Norfolk musicians breathing new life into the local scene these last few months. Here, in no particular order, I’d like to present five of the local acts that have most impressed, entranced, and inspired me in 2018.Continue Reading

THE NORWICH RADICAL IN 2018

by Alex Valente

This past year has seen a global increase in horrible news stories. From the victory of the extreme right-wing in Brazil with Bolsonaro, to Italy’s rising black wave of fascism, to Russia and Turkey competing in totalitarian games, to the US and UK’s attempts to dehumanise the trans* community and migrants (no, there is no crisis), and the constant influx of horror that are the Trump administration and the Brexit shambles, we’re at a dangerous, terrifying, angering moment in history – and most mainstream media is complicit or silent.

I started one of our monthly emails in a very similar vein, back in October, and I’m sad to notice that not that much has changed since. Continue Reading

20 BEST RADICAL MUSICAL RELEASES OF 2018

by Chris Jarvis

We return with a round-up of the best radical music from the past year!
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20 BEST RADICAL MUSICAL RELEASES OF 2017

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by Chris Jarvis

It’s a common cliché that the quality and abundance of political and protest music is directly proportionate to the awfulness of the broader political landscape. The Vietnam War gave us the great American folk singers. The stagnation, unemployment and neoliberalism’s cusp of the 1970s bred punk. Thatcher’s Britain brought us the motley crew of rebels surrounding Red Wedge. The rapid and destructive spread of militant capitalism and imperialism at the end of the Cold War bore Rage Against the Machine. Apartheid in South Africa swelled a wonderful mix of pioneering sounds and firebrand resistance.

Unsurprisingly, 2017 was one of those years – a terrifying political context coalescing into a bumper crop of fantastic radical releases. So with a withering nod to the year that was and with a glint of hope in the sounds of revolution, here are the very best radical musical releases 2017 had to offer.
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