‘The Chagos Betrayal : How Britain Robbed an Island and Made Its People Disappear’ by Florian Grosset is winner of the Bread and Roses Award 2022

2022 marks 100 years since the Bread and Roses strike of 1912 and 10 years since the Award
was established by Housmans in 2012. It has since been run in collaboration with Five Leaves
Bookshop and then Lighthouse – Edinburgh’s Radical Bookshop

From almost 70 submissions, our panel of judges have settled on one clear winner from a
shortlist of 5 titles. The winner was announced at a virtual event on November 29th, attended
by shortlisted authors, contributors & editors, and co-hosted by Lighthouse & Five Leaves
bookshop on behalf of the Alliance of Radical Booksellers.

The 2022 winner of the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing is:
The Chagos Betrayal : How Britain Robbed an Island and Made Its People Disappear
by Florian Grosset from Myriad Editions

Grosset will be awarded the £500 prize by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers.

Florain Grosset

The Chagos Betrayal is a shocking, crucial and masterfully told account of British complicity in the
forced exodus of the Chagos islanders in the Indian Ocean. It is hand-drawn and painted in watercolour,
with a few digitally-augmented images – it is also the first work of Graphic nonfiction to win the Bread & Roses Award.

“Florian Grosset has crafted, with beauty and clarity, a powerful account of the dispossession of the
Chagosian people and a fervent call for justice in what is an ongoing atrocity. I was struck by how little
known this chapter of our history is despite more widespread engagement with Britain’s colonial legacies – we hope this Award will in some small way help The Chagos Betrayal to change that.” – Mairi Oliver

“I’m delighted that the Chagos Betrayal has won. This often neglected topic is important in its own right
and also serves to illustrate the continuation of the aftermath of colonisation to the present day. This
format is accessible and essential reading for all.” – Jane Watts

“Grosset’s storytelling made an immediate impression. The imagery was so vivid I found myself returning to parts of the history of Chagos and the stories of the book as if they were memories. I’m excited to see what she does next.” – Anita Jeyam

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Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2022 Winner Announcement

TIME:29.11.2022 : 18:00 – 19:00

FEATURED SPEAKERS
Koshka Duff, Florian Grosset, Hsiao-Hung Pai, Rhian E Jones & A Contributor To Empire’s Endgame

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The Bread and Roses Award is a book prize with a difference: presented by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers, and without the backing of corporate sponsors, the award seeks to recognise and celebrate excellence in the field of radical political non-fiction.

2022 marks 100 years since the Bread and Roses strike of 1912 and 10 years since the Award was established by Housmans in 2012. It has since been run in collaboration with Five Leaves Bookshop and then us at Lighthouse.

From almost 70 submissions, our panel of judges are thrilled to present a shortlist of 5 titles, and at this event to announce the winner we will hear from the authors and editors of all 5 shortlisted books! Come find out more about 5 tremendous books from those who brought them into the world:

• Abolishing the Police, Ed Koshka Duff from Dog Section Press
• Ciao Ousmane: The Hidden Exploitation of Italy’s Migrant Workers, Hsiao-Hung Pai from from Hurst
• The Chagos Betrayal : How Britain Robbed an Island and Made Its People Disappear, Florian Grosset from Myriad Editions
• Empire’s Endgame, Gargi Bhattacharyya et al from Pluto Press
• Paint your town red, Matthew Brown and Rhian E Jones from Repeater Books

This event will last 1 hour online, we’ll get a wee introduction to each book, an opportunity to ask speakers questions and then we’ll announce the 2022 Winner of the Bread & Roses Award live!

To attend this event please follow the link to Lighthouse Bookshop in Edinburgh who are coordinating the prize this year:

https://lighthousebookshop.com/events/bread-and-roses-award-for-radical-publishing-announcing-2022-winner

Bread And Roses Award 2022 The Shortlist & The Longlist

The Bread and Roses Award is a book prize with a difference: presented by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers, and without the backing of corporate sponsors, the award seeks to recognise and celebrate excellence in the field of radical political non-fiction.

2022 marks 100 years since the Bread and Roses strike of 1912 and 10 years since the Award was established by Housmans in 2012. It has since been run in collaboration with Five Leaves Bookshop and now currently with Lighthouse Books in Edinburgh.

From almost 70 submissions, our panel of judges are thrilled to present a shortlist of 5 titles and a longlist of 10. The winner will be announced end of November and be awarded the £500 prize.

SHORTLIST:

Abolishing the Police, Ed Koshka Duff from Dog Section Press

Ciao Ousmane: The Hidden Exploitation of Italy’s Migrant Workers, Hsiao-Hung Pai from from Hurst

The Chagos Betrayal : How Britain Robbed an Island and Made Its People Disappear, Florian Grosset from Myriad Editions

Empire’s Endgame, Gargi Bhattacharyya et al from Pluto Press

Paint Your Town Red, Matthew Brown and Rhian E Jones from Repeater Books

LONGLIST:

Cut from the Same Cloth? : Muslim Women on Life in Britain, Ed Sabina Akhtar from Unbound

Make Bosses Pay, Eve Livingston from Pluto Press

Planet on Fire, Matthew Lawrence & Laurie Laybourn-Langton from Verso

The Transgender Issue, Shon Faye from Penguin

The 32 : An Anthology of Irish Working-Class Voices, Ed Paul McVeigh from Unbound

The shortlist is reflective of the dynamic, prescient publishing of many smaller independent and radical presses, hitting on issues that have loomed ever larger since submissions closed in January 2022: from migrant rights and policing, to economic inequality and a reckoning with Britain’s Imperial legacies. Whilst the longlist also offers vital insight into the climate crisis, union organizing and marginalized voices. The shortlist includes a graphic history and two anthologies, as well as a previous winner of the prize- Hsiao-Hung Pai. Past winners include Ellen Clifford, Johny Pitts, Reni Eddo-Lodge and, in its very first year, David Graeber.

‘The War on Disabled People’ by Ellen Clifford is winner of the tenth Bread and Roses Award 2021

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers is pleased to announce that Ellen Clifford is the winner of the tenth Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing for her book The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe (Zed/Bloomsbury, £12.99)

Ellen Clifford said “It is an absolute honour to win the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing, following in the footsteps of great thinkers I have admired and who have used writing to try to make the world a better place. The Bread and Roses Award is the only award I have ever aspired to win because it validates exactly what I aspire to do – which is to use writing to explore ideas that can make the world a better place. I am grateful that the Award and that Radical Booksellers exist. I am also indebted to Zed Books for giving me the opportunity to write and for taking a chance on a first time author.”

Ellen Clifford is a disabled activist who has worked within the disability sector for over twenty years. She currently serves on the National Steering Group for Disabled People Against Cuts. This is her first book.

Karen Shook, former Books Editor at Times Higher Education magazine, on behalf of the judges, said: “The War on Disabled People is a hugely revelatory account of the one-quarter of UK society whose struggle for justice is literally a matter of life and death, and of the determined, defiant disabled activists whose resistance holds important lessons for everyone on the Left.”

She added that the shortlist comprised: “Powerful, wise and wonderfully informative books that not only shine unerring lights on cruelty, inequality and oppression, but also bear witness to humanity, resistance and hope.”

The full shortlist was: 
The War on Disabled People (Zed/Bloomsbury)
Stella Dadzie’s A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance (Verso)
Marcus Gilroy-Ware’s After the Fact? The Truth About Fake News (Repeater)
Emma Griffin’s Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy (Yale)
Owen Hatherley’s Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London (Repeater)
Dan Hicks’ The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (Pluto)
and Olivette Otele’s African Europeans: An Untold History (Hurst).

The Bread and Roses Award is the only book award for radical non-fiction. Its little sister is the Little Rebels Award for children’s fiction. Both awards are organised by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers. This award is for books published in 2020, written by writers living in Britain.

The judging and award ceremony was delayed due to COVID. The call out for books published in 2021 will be made soon.

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers comprises new and second hand bookshops, ranging from new shops (nine new members have joined within the last twelve months) through to bookshops that have been around for decades. As well as these awards the ARB organises the London Radical Bookfair, which will return in 2022.

The Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2021 Shortlist

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers is delighted to announce the shortlist for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2021. Now in its tenth year, the Bread & Roses Award seeks to celebrate excellence in the field of radical political non-fiction.

The £500 prize will be awarded to the winner at a special event to be held at some point in early-October. The pandemic has forced us to delay this years award, and we are considering the possibility to hold an in-person award ceremony, however it may again take place online.

Our judges this year are Jane Elliot, Karen Shook, Tom Utterainer, and Jane Watts.

Please do also visit the website of our sister book prize, The Little Rebel’s Children’s Book Award, for their shortlist for the best books published in the UK for readers aged 0-12.

The Shortlist

Clicking on the publisher link alongside each title will take you to a relevant page with more information about each title.

Ellen Clifford – The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe [Zed/Bloomsbury]

Stella Dadzie – A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance [Verso]

Marcus Gilroy-Ware – After the Fact? The Truth About Fake News [Repeater]

Emma Griffin – Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy [Yale]

Owen Hatherley – Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London [Repeater]

Dan Hicks – The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution [Pluto]

Olivette Otele – African Europeans: An Untold History [Hurst]

Submissions welcome for the 2021 Bread & Roses Award

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers (ARB) is happy to announce that submissions are now being welcomed for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2021. The Bread and Roses Award celebrates non-fiction which is

• informed by socialist, anarchist, environmental, feminist and anti-racist concerns
• inspires, supports or reports on political and/or personal change
• accessible and readable by the interested reader
• relates to global, national, local or specialist areas of interest

Previous winners have included:

David Graeber’s ‘Debt: The First 5,000 Years’ (Melville House, 2011),
Hsiao-Hung Pai’s ‘Scattered Sand: The Story of China’s Rural Migrants’ (Verso, 2012),
Joe Glenton’s ‘Soldier Box: Why I Won’t Return to the War on Terror’ (Verso, 2013)
‘Here We Stand: Women Changing The World’, edited by Helena Earnshaw and Angharad Penrhyn Jones (Honno Press, 2014)
‘The Song of the Shirt: The High Price of Cheap Garments, from Blackburn to Bangladesh’ by Jeremy Seabrook  (Hurst, 2015)
‘The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power’ by Alex Nunns (OR Books, 2016)
Joint winners ‘Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands’ by Stuart Hall with Bill Schwarz (Allen Lane 2017) and ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’ by Reni Eddo-Lodge (Bloomsbury 2017)
‘Europe’s Fault Lines: Racism and the Rise of the Right’ by Liz Fekete (Verso, 2018)
‘Afropean: Notes from Black Europe’ by Johny Pitts (Allen Lane, 2019)

Award ceremony and prize money

Due to continued Covid disruption we cannot say for certain when the announcement will be made, other than to say it will be in the summer of 2021.

There is one prize of £500 to the winning title. The prize is run in conjunction with the ARB’s prize for progressive children’s writing, The Little Rebels Children’s Book Award.

Submissions

PLEASE NOTE A RECENT CHANGE OF ADDRESS FOR SUBMISSIONS TO THIS YEAR’S AWARD.

For full submissions criteria please visit this page on the Bread and Roses website:
https://breadandrosesprize.wordpress.com/faqs

Crucially, submitted books must have been published in 2020 and books must be written, or largely written by authors or editors normally living in the UK.

The Bread and Roses Award 2020 online ceremony

On September 23rd 2020 the ninth Bread and Roses Award ceremony was held online. The six shortlisted authors spoke eloquently about their books, and Helena Earnshaw, representing the judges, spoke about the judging process, the shortlisted books, and announced the winner. You can watch the video of the event here – the winner’s speech is not to be missed!

‘Afropean: Notes from Black Europe’ by Johny Pitts Winner of the Bread & Roses Award 2020

Guest judge Helena Earnshaw announcing the winner

Johny Pitts receiving the award virtually

‘Afropean: Notes from Black Europe’ by Johny Pitts
wins the Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2020

The Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2020 has been awarded to ‘Afropean: Notes from Black Europe’ by Johny Pitts, published by Allen Lane.

The award is given by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers (ARB) and was announced by guest judges, Helena Earnshaw, Angharad Penrhyn Jones, and Hsiao-Hung Pai, themselves previous winners of the award, at an online ceremony.

The Bread and Roses Award is a book prize with a difference: presented by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers, and without the backing of corporate sponsors, the award seeks to recognise and celebrate excellence in the field of radical political non-fiction. An award of £500 is made to the winning author.

Now in its eighth year, the first book to win the award was ‘Debt: The First 5,000 Years’, written by the anthropologist and activists David Graeber, who sadly died earlier this month, and whose memory and work was honoured at the award ceremony.

Quote from Johny Pitts:

“That Afropean has been embraced by booksellers and writers with histories of resistance to injustice and intolerance is immensely encouraging. My book stands proudly on the shoulders of an intellectual legacy they have long supported and enriched.  To share the spotlight with such a vigorous and urgent shortlist has been equally rewarding. My gratitude to all involved for continuing to champion our work in such uncertain times”.

Quotes from Guest Judges regarding ‘Afropean’.

“An extremely readable and richly-textured blend of travel, history and politics. Johny Pitts views the world with a sharp, unflinching, yet human gaze – there is positivity and warmth in abundance. This is not a book to be rushed, but to be savoured.” – Helena Earnshaw

“Afropean is a unique political documentary about Black experience in Europe. Political writing about the continent’s racialised peoples is much needed and Afropean does it brilliantly by getting up close and personal.”  – Hsiao Hung-Pai

“This is a multi-layered, lyrical book, combining travel writing with politics, history, memoir, and on-the-ground documentary journalism. Johny Pitts challenges us to view Europe through a different lens. Original, moving and deeply engaging, Afropean is a hugely impressive achievement and deserves the widest possible readership.”  – Angharad Penrhyn Jones

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers

The Bread and Roses prize is awarded by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers (ARB) which helps to support and promote the work of Britain’s radical and progressive booksellers.

Bread & Roses Award 2020 Online Award Ceremony

Please join us for this year’s Bread & Roses Award 2020 Online Award Ceremony, taking place at 7pm on Wednesday 23rd September. The event is free; all you have to do take part in this live streamed event is register by emailing events@fiveleaves.co.uk and you will be sent the necessary link.

Taking part in the ceremony and introducing their books will be shortlisted authors:
Becky Alexis-Martin, Kate Charlesworth, Priyamvada Gopal, Ruth Kinna, Johny Pitts and senior editor at Verso Leo Hollis speaking on behalf of Frances Ryan.

They will be joined by guest judges, the previous Bread & Roses winners :Helena Earnshaw, Angharad Penrhyn Jones, and Hsiao-Hung Pai.

The event will be hosted by Ross Bradshaw of Five Leaves Bookshop.

The Bread and Roses Award is a book prize with a difference: presented by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers, and without the backing of corporate sponsors, the award seeks to recognise and celebrate excellence in the field of radical political non-fiction. An award of £500 will be made to the winning author.

The Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2020 Shortlist

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers is delighted to announce the shortlist for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2020. Now in its ninth year, the Bread & Roses Award seeks to celebrate excellence in the field of radical political non-fiction.

The £500 prize will be awarded to the winner at a special event to be held at some point in mid-September. The pandemic has forced us to delay this years award, and we are holding out for the possibility to hold an in-person award ceremony, however if this proves impossible the award ceremony will take place on line.

Our guest judges this year are all previous winners of the Bread & Roses award: Helena Earnshaw, Angharad Penrhyn Jones, and Hsiao-Hung Pai.

Please do also visit the website of our sister book prize, The Little Rebel’s Children’s Book Award, who will be announcing their shortlist for the best books published in the UK for readers aged 0-12 imminently.

The Shortlist

Clicking on the publisher link alongside each title will take you to a relevant page with more information about each title.

‘Afropean: Notes from Black Europe’ by Johny Pitts (Allen Lane)

‘Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People’ by Frances Ryan (Verso)

‘Disarming Doomsday: The Human Impact of Nuclear Weapons since Hiroshima’ by Becky Alexis-Martin (Pluto Press)

‘The Government of No One: The Theory and Practice of Anarchism’ by Ruth Kinna (Pelican)



‘Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent’ by Priyamvada Gopal (Verso)

‘Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide. A graphic guide to lesbian and queer history 1950-2020’ by Kate Charlesworth (Myriad Editions)