Welcome to the Sparrows' Nest Library and Archive

Based in Nottingham (UK), we look after tens of thousands of books, journals, pamphlets, zines, leaflets, posters and other items documenting the anarchist movement in the UK and beyond, as well as local radical history. Browse our catalogue, access digitised records in our free Digital Library and get in touch to arrange a visit.
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Welcome back to our Document of the Month feature, showcasing some of the awesome documents in our collections.

This month we want to showcase one of the letters held in our collections, written in 1961 by a New York based Libertarian group to the Syndicalist Workers' Federation in London. Discussing the reception of the Cuban Revolution in the radical movement in the US, it provides a fascinating historical snapshot and exemplifies kind of non-published stuff we hold in our vaults:

LL to SWF (1961): A letter eg. regarding divisions over Castro's Cuba, drawing parallels to 1920s and 30s glorification of the USSR...

P.S. It is really due to people like the SWF's Ken Hawkes that social history can be written at all. Involved with the AFB and later the SWF from at least the early 1940s to the mid 1960s, Ken appears to have looked after and preserved many records of the SWF, stuff many others would have thrown away at the time, but which now provides us with extensive research opportunities regarding a mostly overlooked period in the history of our movement. For more information on the SWFs correspondence preserved in Ron's Collection, please get in touch or browse the Digital Library!

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