Overview

In 1984, ""The People"" branded Ian Bone 'the most dangerous man in Britain'. They weren't far wrong. From the inner city riots of 1981 to the miners' strike and beyond the butler's son and founder of Class War was indeed a greater thorn in Margaret Thatcher's side than the useless blatherings of the Official Opposition. Class War were the real opposition! It was Ian Bone who linked the inner city rioters of Brixton and Handsworth with the striking miners. It was Bone who ""The People"" spotted rioting with miners in Mansfield, attacking laboratories with the Animal Liberation Front and being fingered by the ""Guardian"" as the man behind the 1985 Brixton Riot. But that was only the half of it...from 1965 to 1985, from Swansea to Cardiff and London the mayhem spread countrywide. In ""Bash The Rich"", Ian Bone tells it like it was. From The Angry Brigade to The Free Wales Army, from the 1967 Summer of Love to 1977 anarcho-punk, from Grosvenor Square to the Battle of the Beanfield from the Stop the City riots to Bashing the Rich at the Henley Regatta, Ian Bone breaks his silence. In the 1980s, Ian Bone was 'The Anarchist In The UK' with a half brick in one hand and an incendiary pen in the other. How did the child who lived in a fabulous English mansion and saluted the AA man from a Rolls Royce come to be the man who famously promised to Bash the Rich and leave Hampstead a smouldering ruin? Where do David Niven, Keith Allen, Rik Wakeman, Douglas Fairbanks Junior, Cynthia Payne, George Melly, Flanagan and Allan, Yoko Ono Pope John Paul and Lofty from Eastenders fit into the story. Why did Gregory Peck send Ian Bone a Get well card? This is no dry tome destined to gather dust in leftie bookshops. Against a background of all the major outbreaks of disorder of the time it's a startlingly honest, funny, warts n' all scream of rage from a gutter level anarchist prepared to fight ""by any means necessary"". That ""the most dangerous man in Britain"" is at liberty to write books rather than serving a life sentence for sedition or being hung for treason will be the first question on every MP's lips as this smouldering anarchist bomb hits the bookshelves.

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The Independent December 24 2006 four out of five stars Bash the Rich: True-life confessions of an anarchist in the UK, by Ian Bone (TANGENT BOOKS GBP9.99) Labelled ""the most dangerous man in Britain"" by the Sunday People in 1984, Class War founder Ian Bone has now produced a book about his days putting the boot into the ruling classes. It isn't subtle, and it isn't any kind of blueprint on how to successfully start a revolution, but it is very funny. People of all kinds of different political persuasion may find this a problem: violent activism reduced to the level of a comic book. On the right, there are still many who'll remember the cover of the Class War newspaper with a picture of Thatcher being brained by a meat cleaver; on the left there have always been humourless ""realists"" - the kind who've subsequently taken over the Labour Party and weeded out the socialism. But from the first page, where Bone's mother and father are described hurling cow-pats at a Tory MP (""...my dad had scooped the fly-blown dry-crusted cowpat expertly on to his newspaper, raced across the road and squelched it deep into Sir Tufton Bufton's Knight of the Shire patrician grin""), to the lyrics quoted from the song ""Tory Funerals"" by his band, the Living Legends (""I couldn't care less, I couldn't give a toss / At the sudden death of a factory boss / The ruling class are really hated / All I want... is them cremated""), it's clear that, while Bone may be dangerous, he also knows how to entertain. Did any of it make any difference? Who knows where Britain would be without irritants like Class War picking at the boundaries of state control. Their bigger aim may never be achieved, but some small battles can still be won.

The Independent December 24 2006 four out of five stars Bash the Rich: True-life confessions of an anarchist in the UK, by Ian Bone (TANGENT BOOKS GBP9.99) Labelled the most dangerous man in Britain by the Sunday People in 1984, Class War founder Ian Bone has now produced a book about his days putting the boot into the ruling classes. It isn't subtle, and it isn't any kind of blueprint on how to successfully start a revolution, but it is very funny. People of all kinds of different political persuasion may find this a problem: violent activism reduced to the level of a comic book. On the right, there are still many who'll remember the cover of the Class War newspaper with a picture of Thatcher being brained by a meat cleaver; on the left there have always been humourless realists - the kind who've subsequently taken over the Labour Party and weeded out the socialism. But from the first page, where Bone's mother and father are described hurling cow-pats at a Tory MP ( ...my dad had scooped the fly-blown dry-crusted cowpat expertly on to his newspaper, raced across the road and squelched it deep into Sir Tufton Bufton's Knight of the Shire patrician grin ), to the lyrics quoted from the song Tory Funerals by his band, the Living Legends ( I couldn't care less, I couldn't give a toss / At the sudden death of a factory boss / The ruling class are really hated / All I want... is them cremated ), it's clear that, while Bone may be dangerous, he also knows how to entertain. Did any of it make any difference? Who knows where Britain would be without irritants like Class War picking at the boundaries of state control. Their bigger aim may never be achieved, but some small battles can still be won.

Author Information

Ian Bone is the leading militant anarchist in the UK. He was born the son of a socialist butler in 1947 and formed a deep hatred of 'the rich' as a result of his family experiences 'in service'. While studying at Swansea University in the 1960s, Bone honed his raw instincts into a an anarchic political philosophy which dismissed all forms of control whether they were enforced by the ruling class elite or the Trotskyist Left. Bone's political agenda worked at street and council estate level in Swansea and he gained notoriety when he founded the Alarm scandal sheet which exposed the 'Swansea Mafia' and led to the convictions of several local councillors for corruption. Alarm became the scandal sheet that the whole of Swansea talked about, but by the early 80s Bone felt the need to take the model to national level. Before he left Swansea for London Bone and Jimmy Grimes produced the first issue of Class War, a paper which advocated violence as the only means of bringing about revolutionary social change. Throughout the turmoil of the miners' strike, Bone and his comrades worked to open up a second front of rioting in the inner cities in order to draw police resources away from the mining strongholds. Their aim was not just to bring down the Thatcher government but to be at the vanguard of a social and political revolution that would overthrow the established order.

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