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63.
NED GATE/NELL GATE #1-11 (London: December 1972-April 1974) - all published.
Large folio. Four sheets, printed recto and verso (8pp.), side-stapled. Illustrated with photographs and cartoons; posters printed on the back cover of eight of the eleven issues. Printed in Ladbroke Grove by the Crest Press and published every six weeks.
A complete set of this community paper for West London, in particular the North Kensington area. Its first editorial argued that the area was “deliberately [being] run down as a working class community… the rich are moving in. The price of property goes up as the ‘new professionals’ are willing to pay higher rent. As London becomes more and more like one big office and hotel block, more working people who have lived here for years are forced further and further out to the suburbs and to stark new towns.”
The paper was produced by the We Want Everything group, based on the Women’s Centre in Shepherd’s Bush, and its title alternated each issue between Ned Gate and Nell Gate. “We choose articles which show how the ruling class of business and capitalists and police and government operate. How they are motivated by profit and don’t give a toss for our needs. We also show how the people are fighting BACK” (quoted in BitWoMan).
The paper gave extensive coverage to rent strikers, squatters, the low paid, the Notting Hill Housing Trust, playgroups, high rise towers (Trellick Tower and others) and the effects on local residents of the recently constructed Westway flyover. It was widely sold throughout the area (some issues print a list of outlets, among them, Mandarin Books, Notting Hill Books, Virgin Records, Fags/Mags on Holland Park Avenue, several shops on Portobello Road and surrounding streets), and also in hospitals, labour exchanges, pubs, on the streets and in schools.
A rare, complete run of this radical community paper, documenting the housing crisis of the early ‘70s and the specific local resistance to it.
Together with:
i) Ned Gate End of School Special (Summer 1973), a double-sided broadsheet;
ii) three posters printed by the Crest Press, one replicating the back cover from the first issue, the other two supporting squatters’ rights. Each 45x34cm., with old central horizontal folds;
iii) West London Street Press #1 (Autumn 1974), Ned Gate’s one-off successor. Same format (10pp.).
All items Very Good plus to Near Fine.
