It must have been two or three years back now when Giulio D’Errico contacted me about a possible Italian translation of the Tales From the Punkside series, a set of books published by my own Itchy Monkey Press. I’d co-edited the series (which also included Some of Us Scream, Some of Us Shout and And All Around Was Darkness) with Greg Bull, and the books consisted of chapters written about what it was like being a punk. A kind of book/fanzine-type thing. I’d never had any of my books translated before, and at first I was speechless. As the conversation continued, and the enthusiasm for the project began to pick up speed, Giulio became interested in looking at work outside of Itchy Monkey, such as Greg Bull’s and Mickey Penguin’s excellent Not Just Bits of Paper and my co-edited book on anarcho-punk with Matt Worley, entitled The Aesthetic of Our Anger. Ideas were ‘thrown around.’ Which chapters should he include? How does an editor take this decision to include some but to exclude others? All of these issues were dealt with by Giulio who took the lead on content, translation and publication.
Attitudine Riottosa: Anarcopunk in UK therefore, is an Italian-language collection of articles, memories and short stories on British anarcho-punk, with chapters by Russ Bestley, Greg Bull, Justine Butler, Rich Cross, Mike Dines, The Free Association, Alastair ‘Gords’ Gordon, Matt Grimes, Alistair Livingstone, Chris Low, Willie Rissy, Francis Stewart and Peter Webb. To reiterate, the chapters are specifically drawn from:
* Tales From the Punkside, edited by Mike Dines & Greg Bull (Itchy Monkey Press, 2014)
* Not Just Bits of Paper, edited by Greg Bull & Mickey Penguin (Perdam Babylonis Nomen Publications/Situation Press, 2015)
* Some of Us Scream, Some of Us Shout, edited by Greg Bull & Mike Dines (Itchy Monkey Press, 2016)
* The Aesthetic of Our Anger, edited by Mike Dines & Matthew Worley (Autonomedia/Minor Compositions, 2014)
The initial idea for this book came to Giulio during the research for his PhD in Aberystwyth, Wales, in one of the many moments where he was desperately looking for something less academic to think about. His PhD looked at a comparison between the Italian and British squatting movements from the 1970s onwards and, despite differences, he was struck by the similar role punk - and anarcho-punk especially - played at ‘doing politics,’ linking radical politics to subcultures of the 1980s. And this is when he discovered the books from the Tales From the Punkside series.
He notes,
I then got in touch with Mike Dines – and, through him, with the other editors and with Russ Bestley - started a painful selection process to form a collection that could make sense to the Italian audience: a book able to map the differences within British anarcho-punk beyond the all absorbing role that London often plays in British narratives, beyond music, leaving space for personal experiences, activism and other forms of art, and also beyond Crass. It was a way to escape from the rigid framework of academia, proposing different sources and a different way of history-telling from below.
And, it was through this process that,
I came to know and appreciate the connection that some academics in the UK have made with their…networks and research, but at the same time preserving the 'anarcho' side of it from being devoured by academia, participating and fostering non-academic publications and events and ‘allowing’ other voices to emerge. The tension between academia and activism doesn’t always play this well. And in Italy this is something that is sorely missing. That's one of the reasons why the book is being published with AgenziaX, and especially within the series Moicana, Università della strada, which attempts to refocus attention on countercultures bringing together activists, witnesses, researchers, fans…
Consequently, presenting aspects of British anarcho-punk to an Italian audience, this volume hopes to appeal to those who lived through the 1980s in Italy and who will hopefully find something that reverberates with their own experiences. It also aims to trigger a discussion on the relationship between these stories and the stories of Italy in the 1980s, too often squashed between the ‘heroic’ 1970s and the 1990s, which saw the development of new mass movements and global struggles. Punk in Italy has never been the mass phenomenon that it was in the UK, and the innovations and the limits of anarcho-punk have cast a long shadow on the radical movements of the following decades, especially on the social centres movement, which still survives.
AgenziaX – the independent publishing house that supported this project from the beginning – is also a part of this story. Marco Philopat, one of the founders, was involved in the anarcho-punk scene of the early-eighties in Milan. In an autobiographical novel he wrote, he remembers Disorder playing in the first anarchist squat in Milan, where he was living. In some dusty rooms of a social centre there’s a videotape of a Chumbawamba concert from 1986 or 1987. Music travelled, and with it, ideas and stories circulated and were shared, and still are. Giulio should have the last word:
Since it’s quite exceptional that I get to talk about a book written in Italian, and of which I am merely the second-hand-editor and the translator, on an English-language blog, I wish to use this space to publicly thank all the authors of the chapters included in this collection, all the editors of the books I used, and especially Greg Bull, Russ Bestley and Mike Dines - your support have been invaluable and essential to this book.
* A note from Giulio on publishing the book during the pandemic. This book was supposed to be released in April. Due to the lockdown measures and the terrible situation in and around Milan, we decided to postpone it. Now the country is set to reopen. Obviously, workplaces reopened first – those who had shut down at all – after relentless complaints from Italian capitalists, which are still assuring the rest of the country that workplaces are the safest place on earth… but that’s another story. Bookshops and libraries reopened, social distancing measures are in place, and throughout July we’ll promote the book in outdoor events, hopefully hosting authors via video and Italian punks live.
To buy the book please visit: http://www.agenziax.it/attitudine-riottosa/