Radio Citta Futura 1976

 1976 article about Italian radical radio station Radio Citta Futura (Radio Future City) from Red Weekly, paper of the International Marxist Group in the UK. The Rome-based station began broadcasting regularly in that year and played a role in the tumultuous events of that period. It was temporarily closed down by the state while covering the riotous demonstrations of the Movement of '77, as was the another Rome based station,  Radio Onda Rossa. In 1979  five  women involved with the station's feminist programme Radio Donna were shot and seriously injured in a fascist attack on the station.

The scan of the article is incomplete but there's some interesting information including the daily schedule for the station. This includes 'The Night of the Comrades' a late night programme where  'each worker on the station in rotation can broadcast what he/she wants' ('the freakier part of the station') and 'Programme for night workers' based on taped interviews. As mentioned in the article the proliferation of 'Free Radio' followed a court decision in 1975 that ended the state's monopoly on broadcasting - leading to the legal creation of commercial stations as well as political projects like this one. The interviewee - Sandro Silvestri - estimates that at this time there were 800 new radio stations 'in the whole of Italy and there are 52 in Rome alone... at least 120 stations are openly declared to be left wing stations, calling themselves "democratic" radio'.

The station is still broadcasting online (its correct name is Citta Futura not Future as stated in this article).

Source: Red Weekly, 21 October 1976

Other radio posts:

Radio Evasione (prisoners radio show)/Parco Lambro 1992

Portugal 1974/75: radio and revolution

Radical pirate radio in Islington 1969

 

East London Gay Centre attacked (1976)

The East London Gay Centre was at 19 Redmans Road, Stepney in the 1970s. As this report from 1976 describes it faced sometimes violent hostility, some of it seemingly organised and quite possibly by the far right that had a significant presence in that area at the time. In this instance 'an apparently organised group of men ran up the road shouting fascist slogans and throwing pub glasses and beer bottles' while a small party was going on at the centre. 

The centre was a place where people lived as well as socialised, and this article seemingly written by a resident suggests that this was central to being able to live an authentic life - 'Even with gay bars and clubs you can limit your gayness to one night a month or a week, and limit being gay to having sex. But you're not just gay every night at the club or when sleeping with another woman, you are gay the whole time... This is then the first point of living gay centres - by living with other gay people you can be gay the whole time'

Source: Anarchist Worker (paper of the Anarchist Workers Association), September 1976, copy held at Bishopsgate Institute archive.