The magazine Green Anarchist was for a while the principal voice in the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 advocating green anarchism

Green anarchism

Green anarchism, or ecoanarchism, is a school of thought within anarchism which puts a particular emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the thought of the American anarchist Henry David Thoreau and his book Walden...

, an explicit fusion of libertarian socialist and ecological thinking.

Early years

Founded after the 1984 Stop the City

Stop the City

The Stop the City demonstrations of 1983 and 1984 were described as a 'Carnival Against War, Oppression and Destruction', in other words protests against the military-financial complex. These demonstrations can be seen as the forerunner of the anti-globalisation protests of the 1990s, especially...

 protests, the magazine was launched in the summer of that year by an editorial collective consisting of Alan Albon

Alan Albon

Alan Albon was a British anarchist and publisher. He served as an editor for Freedom before becoming one of the founding editors of Green Anarchist, with Richard Hunt and Marcus Christo. He was born in Edmonton on August 24, 1921 and died at Ashford, Kent on March 30, 1989.-References:...

, Richard Hunt

Richard Hunt (editor)

Richard Hunt is a green anarchist activist, and editor of various environmentalist magazines, such as Green Anarchist and Alternative Green. He was widely criticised in the anarchist community for his perceived sympathies for nationalism, and wrote an editorial for Green Anarchist expressing...

 and Marcus Christo. Albon had been an editor of Freedom whilst Hunt had become frustrated with the more mainstream green

Green Movement

The Green Movement refers to a series of actions after the 2009 Iranian presidential election, in which protesters demanded the removal of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from office...

 magazine Green Line for which he had been writing. The younger Christo had come from a more anarcho-punk

Anarcho-punk

Anarcho-punk is punk rock that promotes anarchism. The term anarcho-punk is sometimes applied exclusively to bands that were part of the original anarcho-punk movement in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s...

 background – he was also a member of Green CND, and had been involved in the blockade of Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

's car at the 1984 Lancaster House

Lancaster House

Lancaster House is a mansion in the St. James's district in the West End of London. It is close to St. James's Palace and much of the site was once part of the palace complex...

 summit meeting.

Early issues featured a range of broadly anarchist and ecological ideas, bringing together groups and individuals as varied as Class War

Class War

Class War is a UK class struggle based group and newspaper originally set up by Ian Bone and others in 1983. It subsequently mutated various forms, becoming specifically anarchist....

, veteran anarchist writer Colin Ward

Colin Ward

Colin Ward was a British anarchist writer. He has been called "one of the greatest anarchist thinkers of the past half century, and a pioneering social historian." -Life:...

, anarcho-punk band Crass

Crass

Crass are an English punk rock band that was formed in 1977, which promoted anarchism as a political ideology, way of living, and as a resistance movement. Crass popularised the seminal anarcho-punk movement of the punk subculture, and advocated direct action, animal rights, and environmentalism...

, as well as the Peace Convoy, anti-nuclear campaigners, animal rights

Animal rights

Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...

 activists and so on. However the diversity that many saw as the publication's greatest strength quickly led to irreconcilable arguments between the essentially pacifist

Pacifism

Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...

 approach of Albon and Christo, and the advocacy of violent confrontation with the State favoured by Hunt.

Albon and Christo left Green Anarchist shortly afterwards, and the magazine saw a succession of editorial collectives, although Hunt remained in overall control. During this period he published articles which were increasingly alienating much of the magazine's readership. Matters came to a head after Hunt wrote an editorial which expressed support for British troops in the Gulf War

Gulf War

The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...

 and extolled the virtues of patriotism

Patriotism

Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...

. Hunt has stated that the rest of the editorial collective wished to bring to Green Anarchist a more left-wing political approach, while Hunt wanted it to remain non-aligned. Shortly afterwards he left to start another magazine Alternative Green

Alternative Green

Alternative Green is a UK magazine set up by former Green Anarchist contributor and editor Richard Hunt in 1991 to promote the ideas later set out in his book 'To End Poverty, The Starvation of the Periphery by the Core' ....

, which continued to promote his own particular view of green anarchism, and eventually became closely linked to the National-Anarchist movement from the mid-90s onwards.

Into the Nineties

During the 1990s Green Anarchist came under the helm of an editorial collective that included Paul Rogers, Steve Booth

Steve Booth

Steve Booth was a British political activist and journalist, and was one of the defendants in the GANDALF trial.After involvement in the 1990 anti-Poll Tax movement, and having written a number of articles for 'Freedom' magazine, he first became involved with the UK Green Anarchist magazine in...

 and others, during which period the publication became increasingly aligned with primitivism

Anarcho-primitivism

Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...

, an anti-civilization philosophy advocated by writers such as John Zerzan

John Zerzan

John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...

, Bob Black

Bob Black

Bob Black is an American anarchist. He is the author of The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, Beneath the Underground, Friendly Fire, Anarchy After Leftism, and numerous political essays.-Writing:Some of his work from the early 1980s includes...

 and Fredy Perlman

Fredy Perlman

Fredy Perlman was an author, publisher and activist. His most popular work, the book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, details the rise of state domination with a retelling of history through the Hobbesian metaphor of the Leviathan. The book remains a major source of inspiration for...

.

During this period the magazine expressed sympathy for the Unabomber actions of Ted Kaczynski and published a notorious article entitled "The Irrationalists" that apparently supported actions such as the Oklahoma City bombing

Oklahoma City bombing

The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It was the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks. The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19...

 and the sarin gas attacks

Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway

The Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, usually referred to in the Japanese media as the , was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of Aum Shinrikyo on March 20, 1995....

 carried out by the Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

 based Aum cult. This once again alienated much of the UK anarchist movement, and led to strong criticism of the magazine by Stewart Home

Stewart Home

Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...

 , Counter Information, the Anarchist Communist Federation

Anarchist Federation (British Isles)

The Anarchist Federation is a federation of anarcho-communists in Great Britain and Ireland. It is not a political party, but a direct action, agitational and propaganda organisation.- Origins :...

  and others. Steven Booth, the writer of the article, has since renounced the views expressed in it, as well as the primitivist movement altogether.

The GANDALF trial

Starting in 1995, Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

 Police began a series of at least 56 raids, code name

Code name

A code name or cryptonym is a word or name used clandestinely to refer to another name or word. Code names are often used for military purposes, or in espionage...

d 'Operation Washington', that eventually resulted in the August to November 1997 Portsmouth

Portsmouth

Portsmouth is the second largest city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is notable for being the United Kingdom's only island city; it is located mainly on Portsea Island...

 trial of Green Anarchist editors Booth, Saxon Wood, Noel Molland and Paul Rogers, as well as Animal Liberation Front

Animal Liberation Front

The Animal Liberation Front is an international, underground leaderless resistance that engages in illegal direct action in pursuit of animal liberation...

 (ALF) Press Officer Robin Webb

Robin Webb

Robin Webb is an English animal rights activist. He is a former member of the ruling council of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals , and former director of Animal Aid...

 and Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group (ALFSG) newsletter editor Simon Russell. The defendants organised the GANDALF Defence campaign. Three of the editors of Green Anarchist, Noel Molland, Saxon Wood and Booth were jailed for 'conspiracy to incite'. However, all three were shortly afterwards released on appeal.

Booth and Rogers' Green Anarchists

In the late 1990s there was a further split amongst the GA collective, leading to the existence of two entirely separate magazines using the Green Anarchist title. These are respectively published by an editorial team that includes Paul Rogers and 'John Connor' (who subtitle their version of the paper as the original and best), and Steve Booth, who has publicly renounced some of his earlier published views and expressed a wish to 'return to the magazine's roots'.