VOICES 5 ISSUES 26 - 31 1982 - 84

Paperback 6" x 9"  453 pages £11.66
with complete Voices author index

Voices, the Manchester based magazine of working class writing, ran for 31 issues between 1972 and 1984. It included such talents as Jimmy McGovern, John Cooper Clark, Tony Marchant, Jim Arnison and Ken Worpole. This reprint contains the complete text and graphics of the entire series in 5 volumes (available separately).

From the INTRODUCTION to Voices 5

Rick Gwilt resigned in January 1982 after editing issue 26. What followed was a series of editors – Olive Rogers issue 27 – Phil Boyd issue 28 – Di Williams issue 29 – Ailsa Cox issue 30 and finally Roger Mills for issue 31. 

Olive Rogers gave an interesting insight into Voices selection process: 

Work sent in to VOICES is collected into a 'fairly' neat pile. The members of the editorial group read through every piece individually, marking the work as it is read. It is then passed on to the next editorial member until everyone has read, commented upon and given a grading mark to the pieces. At a later date the whole editorial group come together to discuss and select material for the magazine. The self selecting pieces (those having an A rating plus glowing comment) take up little time. Pieces in the middle range are more difficult and sometimes require much discussion, even argument. The previously mentioned problem always arises: shortage of women's work. A great effort is made to maintain the balance required for a magazine like VOICES for instance women /men, social/political, home/industry etc. 

Phil Boyd’s editorial gave an excellent summary of the aesthetics and politics of Voices triggered by the infamous early judgement of the 1979 Arts Council. Some vindication came from Blake Morrison’s revaluation. Phil reported on the problems in his work group: 

The danger is that the ones who see writing as the main thing in their lives are alienated by our cloth cap image. At least two working class writers have left my group feeling that the politics of the Federation add up to an apology (sorry it's not very good, we're only working class). For others who remain within the movement, there can be a feeling of isolation and demoralisation when they attempt to break out of the mould of social realism. 

Ailsa Cox skewered the Voices stereotype in her editorial to issue 30: 

. I've heard people in my own group shy away, saying their work isn't "right" for VOICES; or carefully select a piece of work they think will make the right impression on the editors, even though it isn't really the best they can do. There is an idea that something exists called "Voices material", which must be about something obviously political, preferably to do with work, probably set thirty years ago, and which proves the author's working class credentials before the first sentence has finished. What this boils down to, is that people submitting to VOICES are consciously or unconsciously imitating the rules that we condemn in commercial publishing; they're fitting their writing to a preconceived market. 

Both Phil and Ailsa finished with: This article is a personal contribution and does not necessarily express the views of the whole editorial group which sounded like something from the Soviet Writers Congress of 1934. Was the bureaucracy taking over? Lotte Moos raised the spectre of self-censorship and the dead hand of socialist realism in her letter in issue 28 (p174). Wendy Whitfield thought the FWWCP had turned the lively original Voices into a sclerotic house journal (p173)

Roger Mills, in a valedictory editorial got back to the basic impulse: 

During a period of unemployment, I wrote several prose pieces and while wondering what to do with them I stumbled over Centreprise bookshop in Hackney, where I had lived all my life. In the clearly defined local section I found A License to Live by Ron Barnes. It was the first locally produced autobiography I had read. The working class had been talked about before but it was the other classes doing the talking.

The book was a revelation to me. History meant the working class too. We were writing about ourselves and reading about ourselves as well - smashing the idea that only the famous had a tale to tell, a 'result’.

Little magazines are best edited by a single-minded, obsessive lunatic in it for the duration. Rick Gwilt’s reign was held up as a golden age, but there were good things in those last issues. Perhaps politics killed the cat. Michael Foot’s debacle in 1983 was demoralising and then we had the Tory onslaught to cope with. We can ask “why did Voices fail?” but more interestingly “why did it last so long?”