Freedom Press was established in 1886 by Charlotte Wilson, with Peter Kropotkin among the founding circle, making its bookshop the oldest anarchist bookshop still trading in Britain. The building down Angel Alley, behind the KFC sign near Aldgate East, has been attacked twice over its politics, firebombed in March 1993 and hit by arson again in February 2013. Ownership passed from individual editors to the Friends of Freedom Press, a company limited by guarantee, in 1982, and the shop has run on volunteer labour ever since. Shelves hold anarchist theory, history, pamphlets and zines spanning workers' struggles, anti-fascism, abolitionism and queer and decolonial writing, alongside the Freedom journal the press still publishes twice a year. The shop is a member of the Alliance of Radical Booksellers and opens six days a week, closed Sundays.
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