Submissions welcome for the 2018 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 2018. 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)

Award ceremony and prize money

The award will be awarded at the London Radical Bookfair, to be held on a Saturday in June 2018 (precise date tbc). This 2018 London Radical Bookfair will  be taking place at Goldsmiths University.

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 NEW MAILING ADDRESS FOR SUBMISSIONS TO THIS YEAR’S AWARD.

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

Crucially, submitted books must have been published in 2017 and books must be written, or largely written by authors or editors normally living in the UK.

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‘The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power’ by Alex Nunns wins the Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2017

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers (ARB) is delighted to announce the winner of this year’s Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing as ‘The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power’ by Alex Nunns and published by OR Books.

The judges greatly appreciated this exploration of the deep roots of the Corbyn phenomenon. In The Candidate, Nunns shows that Corbyn’s victories weren’t the accidental consequence of other candidates’ failures, but were built on the work of an energised, thoughtful and committed movement of citizen-campaigners.

Cogent, optimistic, well-written and thoroughly researched, this hugely topical book records with great intimacy and insight an historical moment whose lessons mustn’t be forgotten, while also exposing the persistent forces which continue to work against social change.

Alex Nunn’s was awarded the prize and a cheque for £500 by guest judge Joan Anim-Addo at this year’s London Radical Bookfair, hosted as ever by the ARB. This year’s prize money has been generously granted by the General Federation of Trade Unions.

Guest judge Joan Anim-Addo presents Alex Nunn’s with the award.

Alex Nunns with the Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2017

Photos by Asya Gefter http://asyagefter.com

Book summary

In September 2015 an earthquake shook the foundations of British politics. Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong and uncompromising socialist, was elected to head the Labour Party. Corbyn didn’t just win the leadership contest, he trounced his opponents. The establishment was aghast. The official opposition now had as its leader a man with a plan, according to the conservative Daily Telegraph, “to turn Britain into Zimbabwe.”

How this remarkable twist of events came about is the subject of Alex Nunns’ highly readable and richly researched account. Drawing on first-hand interviews with those involved in the campaign, including its most senior figures, Nunns traces the origins of Corbyn’s victory in the dissatisfaction with Blairism stirred by the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crash, the move to the left of the trade unions, and changes in the electoral rules of the Labour Party that turned out to be surreally at odds with the intentions of those who introduced them. The system of one-member-one-vote, which delivered Corbyn’s success, was opposed by those on the left and was heralded by Tony Blair who described it as “a long overdue reform that… I should have done myself.”

Giving full justice to the dramatic swings and nail-biting tensions of an extraordinary summer in UK politics, Nunns’ telling of a story that has received widespread attention but little understanding is as illuminating as it is entertaining. He teases out a plotline of such improbability that it would be unusable in a work of fiction, providing the first convincing explanation of a remarkable phenomenon with enormous consequences for the left in Britain and beyond.

For more info please visit the OR Book website:
http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/the-candidate/?utm_source=Bread%20and%20Roses&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=Candidate

The Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2017 Shortlist

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers is delighted to announce the shortlist for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2017. Now in its sixth year, the Bread & Roses Award seeks to celebrate excellence in the field of radical political non-fiction.

The winner will be announced by guest judges Joan Anim-Addo, Vera Chok and Owen Hatherley  at a ceremony at the London Radical Bookfair on Saturday 24^th June 2017. Also announced at this ceremony will be the ARB’s children’s prize, The Little Rebel’s Children’s Book Award, the shortlist for which is now also announced.

THE 2017 SHORTLIST 

‘Lean Out’ by Dawn Foster (Repeater Books)
http://repeaterbooks.com/books/lean-out-dawn-foster

‘The Hammer Blow: How 10 Women Disarmed a War Plane’ by Andrea Needham (Peace News)
http://www.peacenews.info/node/8245/hammer-blow-–-how-10-women-disarmed-warplane

‘The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power’ by Alex Nunns (OR Books)
http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/the-candidate

‘This is the Place to Be’ by Lara Pawson (CB Editions)
http://www.cbeditions.com/pawson.html

‘See Red Women’s Workshop – Feminist Posters 1974-1990’ by See Red Members & Sheila Rowbotham (Four Corners Books)
https://seeredwomensworkshop.wordpress.com

‘The Egyptians: A Radical Story’ by Jack Shenker (Allen Lane)
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/186165/the-egyptians/

‘Another Day in the Death of America’ by Gary Younge (Guardian Faber)
https://www.faber.co.uk/9781783351015-another-day-in-the-death-of-america.html

The winner of the award will receive a cheque for £500. The ARB would like to thank the General Federation of Trade Unions for funding this year’s award.

To view the submissions list for 2017 please visit: https://breadandrosesprize.wordpress.com/2017/03/09/the-bread-and-roses-submission-list-2017

The Bread and Roses Submission List 2017

We are very happy to announce here the books submitted for the 20167 award, which this year features 53 entries. To qualify, all titles must fit the award’s political requirements, and have been published in 2016 by an author who is primarily resident in the UK.

The Shortlist will be announced in April, and the award ceremony will be taking place at the London Radical Bookfair on Saturday June 24th. This year’s bookfair will be held at Goldsmiths University’s Great Hall.

Our thanks to all publishers and authors who have submitted titles.
The Submission List is presented here in alphabetical order, by publisher.

The Egyptians: A Radical Story	Jack Shenker	Allen Lane
The Optician of Lamedusa	Emma Jane Kirby	Allen Lane
The Descent of Man	Grayson Perry	Allen Lane
1917: Russia’s Red Year	John Newsinger and Tim Sanders	Bookmarks
A Rebel’s Guide to Malcolm X	Antony Hamilton	Bookmarks
Schools Out! : The Hidden History of Britain’s School Student Strikes	Steve Cunningham & Michael Lavalette	Bookmarks
This is the Place to Be	Lara Pawson	CB Editions
Lean Logic & Surviving The Future	David Fleming & Shaun Chamberlin	Chelsea Green
Moranifesto	Caitlin Moran	Ebury Press
And the Sun Shines Now: How Hillsborough and the Premier League Changed Britain	Adrian Tempany	Faber&Faber
Gee Vaucher: An Introspective	Stevphen Shukaitis	Firstsite
See Red Women’s Workshop – Feminist Posters 1974-1990	See Red Members & Sheila Rowbotham	Four Corners Books
The Apocalypedia: A Utopian Guide to What is and What isn’t	Darren Allen	Green Books
Another Day in the Death of America	Gary Younge	Guardian Faber
The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe’s Refugee Crisis	Patrick Kingsley	Guardian Faber
The Long Depression	Michael Roberts	Haymarket
Six Authors in Search of Justice: Engaging with Political Transitions	Michael Newman	Hurst
A Revolution Undone: Egypt’s Road Beyond Revolt	H.A. Hellyer	Hurst
The Bleeding Edge: Why Capitalism Musn’t Get its Hands on New Technologies Ever Again	Bob Hughes	New Internationalist
Portraits of Violence : Ten Thinkers on Violence: A Visual Exploration	Brad Evans & Sean Michael Wilson	New Internationalist
NoNonsense Guide: Rethinking Education	Adam Unwin & John Yandell	New Internationalist
Shadow State: Inside the Secret Companies that Run Britain	Alan White	One World
Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East	Christopher M. Davidson	One World
The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power	Alex Nunns	OR Books
The Hammer Blow: How 10 Women Disarmed a War Plane	Andrea Needham	Peace News
Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War	Robin Yassin-Kassab & Leila Al-Shami	Pluto
Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres	Jamie Woodcock	Pluto
The Rent Trap: How we Fell into It and How we Get Out of It	Rosie Walker & Samir Jeraj	Pluto
Cut Out: Living Without Welfare	Jeremy Seabrook	Pluto
1916: Ireland’s Revolutionary Tradition	Kieran Allen	Pluto
The History Thieves: Secrets, Lies and the Shaping of a Modern Nation	Ian Cobain	Portobello Books
City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp	Ben Rawlence	Portobello Books
Being a Beast: An Intimate and Radical Look at Nature	Charles Foster	Profile Books
Reminiscences of RAR	Roger Huddle & Red Saunders	Red Words
Lean Out	Dawn Foster	Repeater Books
Games Without Frontiers	Joe Kennedy	Repeater Books
The Long Depression	Michael Roberts	Haymarket Books
Island Story	J.D. Taylor	Repeater Books
Until We Are Fire	Shirin Ebadi	Rider
The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics and Cultural Labor After the Avant-Garde	Stevphen Shukaitis	Rowman & Littlefield
Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising 2016	Gilbert Achcar	Saqi Books
The Battle for British Islam: Reclaiming Muslim Identity from Extremism	Sara Khan	Saqi Books
The Leveller Revolution	John Rees	Verso
Rebel Crossings: New Women, Free Lovers and Radicals in Britain and the United States	Sheila Rowbotham	Verso
The BBC: Myth of a Public Service	Tom Mills	Verso
Grand Hotel Abyss: The Lives of the Frankfurt School	Stuart Jeffries	Verso
The Last Communard: Adrien Lejeune, the Unexpected Life of a Revolutionary	Gavin Bowd	Verso
Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics	Richard Seymour	Verso
Ending the War on Drugs	Richard Branson	Virgin
The Last Days of the Spanish Republic	Paul Preston	William Collins
Decoding Chomsky: Science and Revolutionary Politics	Chris Knight	Yale
Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East	Christopher Phillips	Yale
Angry White People: Coming Face-to-Face with the British Far Right	Hsiao-Hung Pai	Zed Books
No Borders: The Politics of Immigration Control and Resistance,	Natasha King	Zed Books

 

Submissions now open for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2017

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 2017. 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)

Guest judges

This year’s guest judges are:

Vera Chok is a writer and actor who contributed a chapter to The Good Immigrant (Book of the Year 2016, BBC Book of the Week, #1 on Guardian Books and Amazon bestseller) and is also published by the Guardian, Rising, Yauatcha Life, and The Brautigan Free Press. As a maker, Vera writes and produces mischievous and subversive pieces that investigate the construction of meaning, connection, and performativity. Vera is particularly interested in race, sex and gender and uses comedy as a weapon.

Owen Hatherley is a writer and journalist based in London who writes primarily on architecture, politics and culture. His most recent books include A New Kind of Bleak (Verso, 2012), Landscapes of Communism (Allen Lane, 2015), The Ministry of Nostalgia (Verso, 2016)

Professor Joan Anim-Addo has been the Director of the then Centre for Caribbean Studies at Goldmsiths, and is currently convenor for the undergraduate option: Caribbean Women’s Writing and also the Pathway ‘Literature of the Caribbean and its Diasporas’ within the MA Comparative Literary Studies programme.

Award ceremony and prize money

The prize will be awarded at the London Radical Bookfair, to be held on Saturday 24^th June 2017 in the Great Hall at Goldsmiths University, London.

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

Submissions

For full submissions criteria and procedure please visit Bread and Roses website:
https://breadandrosesprize.wordpress.com/faqs

Crucially, submitted books must have been published in 2016 and books must be written, or largely written by authors or editors living for the majoirty of the year in the UK.

The official deadline is 9^th January 2017, however we would  be very appreciative if the submissions could be made as soon as possible, to allow maximum time for reading.

More information and links

Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing
https://breadandrosesprize.wordpress.com
The Little Rebels Children’s Book Award
www.littlerebelsaward.wordpress.com/
London Radical Bookfair
http://londonradicalbookfair.wordpress.com

Alliance of Radical Booksellers
www.radicalbooksellers.co.uk

‘The Song of the Shirt: The High Price of Cheap Garments, from Blackburn to Bangladesh’ by Jeremy Seabrook wins the Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2016

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers is delighted to announce the winner of this year’s Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing as ‘The Song of the Shirt: The High Price of Cheap Garments, from Blackburn to Bangladesh’ by Jeremy Seabrook, and published by Hurst Publishers.

In ‘The Song of the Shirt’ Seabrook shines a light on the seemingly forgotten plight of Bangladeshi textile workers, and compares, contrasts and links their situation with the histories of Britain’s own textile workers at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Remarkably, Seabrook does so with a uniquely lyrical prose style, and with an insight that is both highly knowledgeable and unmistakably heartfelt.

Official synopsis

“Labour in Bangladesh flows like its rivers in excess of what is required. Often, both take a huge toll. Labour that costs $1.66 an hour in China and 52 cents in India can be had for a song in Bangladesh 18 cents. It is mostly women and children working in fragile, flammable buildings who bring in 70 per cent of the country’s foreign exchange. Bangladesh today does not clothe the nakedness of the world, but provides it with limitless cheap garments through Primark, Walmart, Benetton, Gap.

In elegiac prose, Jeremy Seabrook dwells upon the disproportionate sacrifices demanded by the manufacture of such throwaway items as baseball caps. He shows us how Bengal and Lancashire offer mirror images of impoverishment and affluence. In the eighteenth century, the people of Bengal were dispossessed of ancient skills and the workers of Lancashire forced into labour settlements.

In a ghostly replay of traffic in the other direction, the decline of the British textile industry coincided with Bangladesh becoming one of the world’s major clothing exporters. With capital becoming more protean than ever, it wouldn’t t be long before the global imperium readies to shift its sites of exploitation in its nomadic cultivation of profit.”

 

Quotes from guest judges:

Guest judge Nina Power said of the book “Global, passionate, informative: Seabrook’s The Song of the Shirt is an elegiac and enraging account of the garment industry, placing humanity firmly at its heart.”

Co-guest judge Owen Hatherley added “This panoramic yet elliptical account of the textile towns raised and ruined (and back again) by industrial revolution in Lancashire and Bengal is unusual, powerful, and moving.”

The award was presented by Natalie Bennett, Nina Power and Owen Hatherley at the London Radical Bookfair. The author was presented with a cheque for £500, with the award money funded by the General Federation of Trade Unions.

The ARB would like to thank all publishers and authors who took part, resulting in an incredibly strong shortlist, all of which we would highly recommend reading.

The Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2016 Shortlist

The Alliance of Radical Booksellers (ARB) is delighted to announce the shortlist for the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing 2016. Now in its fifth year, the Bread & Roses Awards seeks to celebrate excellence in the field of radical political non-fiction.

Previous winners include David Graeber’s ‘Debt: The First 5000 Years’ and Hsiao-Hung Pai’s ‘Scattered Sand: The Story of China’s Rural Migrants’.

The winner will be announced by guest judges Natalie Bennett and Nina Power at a ceremony at the London Radical Bookfair on Saturday 7^th May 2015. Also announced at this ceremony will be the ARB’s children’s prize, The Little Rebel’s Children’s Book Award, the shortlist for which will be announced at the end of the month.

THE 2016 SHORTLIST 

‘Artwash: Big Oil and the Arts’ by Mel Evans (Pluto Press)

‘Blacklisted: The secret war between big business and union activists’ by Phil Chamberlain and Dave Smith (New Internationalist)

‘Petticoat Heroes: Gender, Culture and Popular Protest in the Rebecca Riots’ by Rhian E. Jones (University of Wales Press)

‘Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg’ by Kate Evans (Verso)

‘The Song of the Shirt: The High Price of Cheap Garments, from Blackburn to Bangladesh’ by Jeremy Seabrook (Hurst)

‘Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? A Story About Women and Economics’ by Katrine Marcal (Portobello)

The winner of the award will receive a cheque for £500. The ARB would like to thank the General Federation of Trade Unions for funding this year’s award.

To view the longlist please visit: https://breadandrosesprize.wordpress.com/2016/01/21/the-bread-and-roses-longlist-2016/