There were certainly a lot of small newspapers in Britain during the 1970s that could be described as “alternative” or “radical”. The exact number is unclear, though, and most didn’t survive into the 1980s. Some came and went barely leaving a trace.

“Alternative” implied they were different from the established local press and at the most basic level they differed in several ways. They were non-commercial — their aim was not to make money — and they were produced on a shoestring, relying on voluntary labour. Organisationally, they sought to avoid hierarchical structures and favoured more egalitarian ways of making editorial decisions. The people involved mostly had no previous experience of journalism.

Some papers were also alternative in the sense that they were critical of the existing local press and presented themselves as an antidote to it. Others were not so much an alternative as a supplement to the existing press: they were hyper-local newsletter-type publications, circulating in a very small area and covering topics that were too parochial to be reported elsewhere.

The “radicalism” of the “alternative” papers also needs some elaboration. In general, they were more willing than existing newspapers to criticise the local establishment and provided an opening for grassroots voices that would not normally have a platform. That, in itself, was both important and radical. The extent of their political radicalism varied considerably, though. They were broadly leftist — in contrast to most of the mainstream press — but not usually aligned with any particular ideology.

In Liverpool, the Free Press embraced radical leftist politics but also had a radical view of journalism that it was seeking to put into practice.

How many papers were there?

There have been at least two attempts to compile a list of papers circulating at the time. The booklet, Here is the Other News, published by the Minority Press Group in 1980, lists 74 “local radical papers” under various categories

Neighbourhood based: 25
Borough wide: 12
Town wide: 31
Regional: 6

The booklet, Here is the Other News, published by the Minority Press Group in 1980, lists about 74 “local radical papers” under various categories (see below). There were undoubtedly more than that because the list excludes papers that had closed down before it was compiled in December 1979.

A much longer list of 205 “regional radical” publications was compiled by a research group at UWE Bristol but that list covers a longer period (1968–1988) and gives no details beyond their location and approximate dates of publication.

The Minority Press Group’s booklet describes the experiences of six pubications: Aberdeen People’s Press, ALARM! (Swansea), Brighton Voice, Islington Gutter Press, Response (Earls Court district of London) and Rochdale’s Alternative Paper. With the exception of ALARM! all these accounts were written by people directly involved.

The Harvester Press archive

In the early 1970s Harvester Press in Brighton began collecting "alternative" and "underground" publications to archive on microfilm. The idea was to make the archive to libraries, researchers, etc, for a fee.

Harvester Press was later taken over by an American company and the archive is now in the US and is not currently accessible. It's a substantial archive and its content by the end of 1972 is documented in a book, The Underground and Alternative and in Britain, by John Spiers who was formerly in charge of Harvester (a PDF copy of the book is here).

Spiers' book includes an index of the archive at the December 1972 cut-off point plus informative notes about each of the following publications:

The Minority Press Group's list