Viva Brighton Issue #52 June 2017

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From ‘Brighton Transformed’ and ‘Zap, Twenty-Five Years of Innovation’
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More stories were gathered and QueenSpark
Books grew into a community publishing house
documenting the lives and social histories of
working-class people and, more recently, other
under-represented minority voices in the city. “It
became a movement about working-class histories”
John tells me “because, at the time, nobody
was doing it and history was that classic top-down
stuff, and so QueenSpark Books became quite
political and joined the Federation of Worker
Writers and Community Publishers.”
The FWWCP represented a country-wide movement
of alternative community-based publishing.
Its members all grew out of campaigns and the
sort of local direct action that typified the political
and social protests of the period.
“For quite some time they published mainly
white-working-class histories, and a lot of local
people wrote their own stories,” John explains,
“talking about where they grew up, the slums, the
work situation. There were books by the fishing
groups on the seafront, the Pullman craftsmen that
worked at the station.” Many of the authors had
little or no experience of writing for publication,
and much of the material was printed verbatim
from recorded interviews. The inclusion of all the
‘ums’, ‘ers’ and conversational repetitions made
some of the early books hard to read, but preserved
the ‘authentic voice’; an important principle
of a movement that valued substance over style.
“In the early days it was maybe more big ‘P’ political,”
says John. “In the late 1970s there were these
quite dense books; socialist analyses of Brighton’s
local economy. Fascinating if you’re into that sort
of stuff, but a hard book to read if you’re not into
economics and Marxism.” Who was Harry Cowley?,
published in 1984, was an account of the local
activist and left-wing firebrand. “He was such
a fascinating local character. A very polarising
character. He used to take over empty properties,
put workers and ex-soldiers in there with their
families. He was a big local agitator. The council
hated him. A few years ago we did a small reprint
of that book, about who he was, how he rubbed
people up the wrong way and why, but that whole
accommodation thing, the arguments he made, are
exactly the same as [people are making] now. So
we need to make sure that is still heard.”
These books were published at a time when
Arts Council funding was plentiful, and staff and
publishing costs were easily met. 107 books later,
and with funding being much harder to come by,
QueenSpark endures as one of the last (if not the
last) publishers of its type. John, who joined the
organisation in 2004, puts its longevity down to its
willingness to change with the times and ‘locality’.
“Both in terms of being about local people, but
also the fact that you can’t walk down the street
without bumping into a writer. There is that history
of creativity and cultural change and interest.”
As Director of Development, his job is to keep the
organisation relevant and viable, and his plan is to
broaden that early remit of documenting ‘lesserheard
voices’. More recent projects have included
books about the Bangladeshi community and the
experiences of transgender people in the city.