Rebirth of a small dark stranger - The Black Dwarf, the British New Left, and 1968 - narrative analysis

Aug 25, 2026

A historical account traces how the radical newspaper Black Dwarf burst onto the UK political scene in 1968, starting from earlier New Left currents and cultural activism. It connects the May Day Manifesto, revolutionary left culture, and the Dialectics of Liberation conference to the paper’s founding by major writers, activists, and designers. It explains the paper’s mission to provide “real politics,” its distribution methods, police attention, and the symbolic choice of its satirical title in continuity with British radical tradition.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages6

Reading Time15 min

AccessFree to download

Black Dwarf and the New Left context

Origins in the May Day Manifesto

Liberation, student radicalism, and Vietnam solidarity

Founding and mission of Black Dwarf

Founders and aims for a popular radical press

Distribution, readership, and police scrutiny

Naming and historical continuity

Thomas Wooler’s satirical Black Dwarf

Continuity with earlier British New Left traditions

New Left Review and ideological shifts

Collaboration between major editors and theorists

Turn toward sharper critique and Leninist debate

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières > English > Europe, Great Britain > Great Britain & Northern Ireland (Europe) > On the Left (UK) > Rebirth of a small dark stranger: The Black Dwarf, the British New Left, and (…) Rebirth of a small dark stranger: The Black Dwarf, the British New Left, and 1968 Saturday 22 December 2018, by DAVIS Madeleine, SPEER Ross (Date first published: 18 May 2018) . The radical newspaper Black Dwarf burst onto the scene in 1968 with an iconic cover. It didn’t last but its spirit lives on . The enduring image of New Left activism, both in Britain and elsewhere, remains that of 1968. Britain’s 1968, however, really began the year before. Publication of the May Day Manifesto gave voice to disenchantment with the first Wilson government and sketched out an alternative socialist programme. Produced by a group that included Edward Thompson, Raymond Williams, Mike Rustin and Stuart Hall, the Manifesto revived and radicalised an earlier New Leftism, but was quickly overtaken by a more avowedly revolutionary left culture. The Dialectics of Liberation conference brought to London Marxist intellectuals like Paul Sweezy and Herbert Marcuse alongside the Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael, radical psychiatrist R.D Laing and poet Allen Ginsberg. A nineday occupation of the LSE signalled the arrival of students as a distinct agent of the left. The Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) was launched, carrying placards calling for ‘Victory to the NLF!’. It was in this atmosphere that The Black Dwarf, now digitised and made available in full [ 1 ] for the first time via the Amiel-Melburn Trust archive, was formed. It was conceived by the literary agent Clive Goodwin, who owned the name; the poet Christopher Logue who came up with the name; Tariq Ali, already a leader of VSC; designer Robin Fior; and poet Adrian Mitchell, among others. Black Dwarf set out to fill a space on the rejuvenated radical left for a popular publication. A broadsheet pre-issue distributed free on May Day demonstrations announced the ‘birth of a small dark stranger’, a fortnightly alternative to the ‘Un-Free Press’ which would ‘write about real politics: the things done to this country by oil magnates, bankers, sterling and property speculators, insurance companies, strike breakers and press lords’. Since no mainstream distributor would stock the paper, sales of up 25,000 for its most popular issues came via street sellers, small newsagents and personal subscriptions. After a group of anarchists daubed instructions for making a Molotov cocktail on the office wall, Scotland Yard came to call. The paper’s name was selected in homage to a satirical newspaper published by radical reformer Thomas Wooler between 1817 and 1824 and rediscovered by Logue. The original Black Dwarf lobbied for parliamentary reform, for which Wooler was charged with seditious libel. In adopting his title, the new Black Dwarf was emphasising its continuity with an older tradition of British radicalism – it began numbering issues from where Wooler left off – just as it blended in Marxism, Trotskyism, anti-imperialism, third worldism, and student activism, all currents then flourishing within the New Left. Invocation of older traditions was a habit shared with its own more proximate predecessors in the earlier British New Left that had arisen from the conjuncture of 1956. Then, Communists who had resigned from their party following the Khrushchev revelations and the suppression of the Hungarian uprising founded the New Reasoner. At the same time a younger generation produced the magazine Universities and Left Review, committed to ‘socialism at full stretch’ to fill the void between ‘the high citadel of Stalinist Russia and the “welfare-state no further”jungle of the mixed economy’. The ‘New Left’ emerged from the confluence of these groups with a wider upsurge of radicalism in drama, art, literature, and anti-nuclear protest. It theorised an ‘expanded conception

FAQs

What political atmosphere set the stage for Black Dwarf in 1968?

The article links 1968 activism to earlier events such as the May Day Manifesto, the Dialectics of Liberation conference, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, and student actions at the LSE, all feeding into a growing radical left culture.

Who conceived Black Dwarf and what did it aim to do?

Black Dwarf is described as formed by figures including Clive Goodwin, Christopher Logue, Tariq Ali, Robin Fior, and Adrian Mitchell. It aimed to fill a space on the rejuvenated radical left with a popular publication focused on real politics.

Why was the newspaper’s name chosen, and how did it signal continuity?

The name was selected as an homage to Thomas Wooler’s earlier satirical newspaper, rediscovered by Logue. By numbering issues from where Wooler left off, the new paper emphasized continuity with an older British radical tradition while blending Marxism, Trotskyism, anti-imperialism, and student activism.

Aug 25, 2026

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