On May 1st 1886, during a strike demanding an 8 hour day involving 400,000 workers in Chicago, police broke up a demonstration. Anarchist union organisers were framed on a charge of throwing a bomb at the police. In 1887 four of them were executed. A fifth cheated the hangman by killing himself in prison. Three more were to spend 6 years in prison. In 1893 they were all pardoned. Governor Altgeld made it clear they were innocent of the crime for which they had been tried. They and the hanged men had been the victims of "hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge". They are known as the Haymarket Martyrs, and May 1st is the day on which we remember that first May Day.

Nottingham's newish radical history group held its second event at the Sumac Centre last Wednesday as part of the 'Idea Share' series (the first was about the statue of Feargus O'Connor, Chartist MP). Some material from the Sparrows' Nest was on display. For details see Notts Indymedia http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2010/01/445391.html

Update. People's Histreh Newsletter no.1 (Feb 2010) is now online: http://thesparrowsnest.org.uk/peoples_histreh_newsletter_feb_2010.pdf

Read more for the event poster which features a bricolage of some of the Nest's archive material about the anti-Poll Tax struggles of 20 years ago.

Keith Leonard was a co-founder of Mushroom Bookshop, Nottingham's alternative and radical bookshop (which served hippies, activists and other malcontents between 1972-2000). He sadly died at Nottingham QMC on August 7th 2009, from heart problems, after years of living with disability.

Keith was born in Kent and studied maths at Cambridge. But in 1972, after a spell as a landscape gardener, he set up Mushroom with his then partner (now a Sparrows’ Nest Collective member).

We don't have any special event planned at The Sparrows' Nest in August, but we are open as usual and if you have time to visit you'll find lots of new books and magazines thanks to AK Press, Kate Sharpley Library, Mayday, and not least from ex-students who have donated books after finishing university degrees, plus other anarchist individuals who have scoured their personal collections. We've also kindly been offered a subscription to Freedom anarchist paper, following an earlier substantial donation of titles from Freedom Press, and received a donation of 0-9 The System Deluxe by Helix Arts in Newcastle.