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      Fryer Library Online Exhibition
    
 
 

Radical Politics & The University of Queensland : Staff & Student Activism

Guide to Exhibition Sections
  1. » Home
  2. » A conscience Left
  3. » Society for Democratic Action
  4. » Hitting the streets
  5. » Talking - a free form democracy
  6. » The Revolution takes the stage
  7. » Divergence
  8. » Hippies & air waves
  9. » Bookshops & bookstalls
  10. » Up the new channels
  11. » The movement moves off campus
  12. » Sixties seeds society
  13. » Timeline / Chronology
  14. » Collections and Sources


Banned titles: "The Little Red School Book" & "Portnoy's Complaint"

Bookshops and Bookstalls

The history of these developments, and later blossoming of the issue and identity based movements, could be told in terms of bookshops. The iconic bookshop was The Red and the Black Bookshop (always referred to as 'the Red and Black' or 'the R and B'). It was started by SDA in 1969. It reflected wide-ranging radical, liberal, humanist and new leftist ideas, and the counter-culture, as that developed.

The 'Red and Black' was associated with the campus based movement through on-campus book stalls, initially 'Zac's bookstall'.

The Red and Black was prosecuted over 'Lysistrata', an Aubrey Beardsley poster.

The sale of the banned book Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth also led to prosecution.

In defiance of the ban, boxes of the book were taken to the UQ campus and sold.

Later The Little Red School Book (a booklet of advice on sex, contraception, rights, personal development and education) was banned and the bookshop was again prosecuted.



Draft Resistors Union Stand, 1971


Book table, outside main Refectory,
University of Queensland

Book stalls were always a feature in the Refec area. Other radical groups, such as the Labor Club, ran them. Later, women's, environmentalist and Marxist groups ran book tables. Book stalls would often appear on the UQ campus, for the duration of the campaign, for example during the late seventies anti-uranium movement.
 

  Hippies and air waves

  Up the new channels
 
 
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