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Published: 3 July 2008

Andrew Burgin: ‘Radical tradition will continue’

Outrageous moment for Bookcellar

ONE of the last radical second-hand booksellers in the country is to close and reopen as a public archive for “outrageous” political thought.
The Porcupine Bookcellar in the dusky basement of Housmans in Caledonian Road has been a haven for revolutionary socialist bibliophiles since it opened in 1992.
The rise of the internet has forced Porcupine’s closure – but book dealer Andrew Burgin says its radical traditions would continue long into the 21st century.
“In the old days you had to trawl through the shelves of second-hand bookshops – but now almost every second-hand book is just one click away on the internet,” he says.
“We are going to open the first archive for outrageous political thought. Lots of people have said they would donate to it. It is the unusual and obscure movements that I’m interested in like Lesbian Separatism, Black Consciousness, Surrealism or the Ranters. We will have writers like Ben Watson, Walter Benjamin, Frank Zappa or Stuart Home. There are so many uncollected journals and pamphlets.”
The sprawling basement has doubled as a campaign head office. The first book on the miners’ strikes of the 1980s was produced in the space. The Lesbian and Gay Switchboard support service and the aid to Bosnia campaign were launched there. Mr Burgin rents the space from Peace News, the pacifist newspaper run in the building’s upstairs headquarters.
The new Public Reading Room will also be open to the public for debate from September 1. School and colleges will be invited to use the space. “The world is in flux at the moment,” Mr Burgin says. “The credit crunch is stirring things up dramatically. Politics is up in the air. The Labour Party is moving sharply to the right. The crisis of capitalism needs to be properly debated. The reading room will be to debate lost political thinkers whose time will come again.
“There are other working-class archives across the country – in Manchester and at the Marx Memorial library – but they are based around a more traditional idea of Marxism. Trotskyism is barely covered at all.”
Radical booksellers from across the country are contributing to a major closing sale at the bookshop on July 5 from 10am. All books will be half price or less.
Tom Foot

* Porcupine Bookcellar, Housmans Bookshop, 9 Caledonian Road, N1. Monday to Saturday 10am-6pm 020 7713 1717.

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