Ambrose decided to take himself to the London Review of Books to counter-balance the arrival of jpegs on Slugger. For a second he thought he had strayed onto A Tangled Web! There he found Vindicated! by David Edgar, a review of two books about the Angry Brigade. Who here is old enough to recall the Angry Brigade ? One could consider them UDA-lite.
This delicately equivocal formulation comes from Stuart Christie, whose hugely engaging memoir includes an account of the Angry Brigade trial. Granny Made Me an Anarchist describes how, after a short flirtation with the flute band of his local Orange lodge in Glasgow, the teenage Christie quickly graduated to the militant wing of CND.
From a review of Gordon Carrs book, The Angry Brigade, THE ANGRY YEARS
John Barker, one of those convicted of conspiracy in the Angry Brigade trial admits ‘In my case the police framed a guilty man,’ and implies that the police also more or less got it right in the cases of the other three alleged Angry Brigade members who were convicted. He also dismisses bombing as ‘a 19th century tactic’ and ‘essentially gestural,’ failing in its attempt to effect real change.
Did bombing effect any real change here ? Ambrose thinks John Barker’s words apply to events in Ireland.