After studying History and Politics for three years at uni and then deciding to move home in order to save to do some travelling, last July I found myself back home in Wakefield, working in a call centre and feeling somewhat disillusioned with post-academic life. As much as university had come with its own stresses, I missed the learning, researching and writing of my essays, along with the access to seemingly endless available writing opportunities offered by various university societies. Simultaneously, as someone on the left, I felt alienated from and disinterested with the political organisations around me – having left the Labour Party in 2020, I was in no rush to join my local CLP.
The idea for Red Riding initially came from a tweet put out by my school-friend James (now co-editor of the magazine), discussing the possibility of hosting a radical history day in Huddersfield (where we had both studied at college). Similar to myself, James had also gone on to study history at university and was now home and looking to get back into researching and writing. The radical history day never came to fruition – although, watch this space! – but it sparked an idea between James and I: maybe we could make something that could both shine a light on the undeniably red roots of our home county and, perhaps selfishly, relieve us of our post-grad disillusionment. Thus, after a long name deliberation session at Wharf Chambers, Red Riding Magazine was born!
We soon expanded our team to involve Danny, another school friend of mine, whose hard work has been essential in getting Red Riding onto its feet this past year – both in writing some of our best articles and designing the logo, website and physical zine. Being able to reunite with old school friends this year over something we’re all passionate about has been a real treat.
Working on Red Riding has been one of the best parts of the past year for me, and I’m really proud of what we’ve managed to achieve so far. We’ve created a website, written and published eight solid articles online, printed and sold over 50 copies of our physical zine, and managed to amass a small but growing readership and an expanding pool of contributors. Our presence at Sheffield Transformed Festival last month was a real highlight of our work to date – the festival gave us the opportunity to give our first talk, connect with the wider socialist movement in Yorkshire, and have our work recognised more widely. It’s also (hopefully) opened up the possibility of future events in collaboration with Yorkshire comrades, which we’re really excited about.
Of course, keeping this self-funded magazine going with such a small team, while all of us also work full time jobs, has had its challenges – in the last month alone, we have had to navigate producing and selling physical zines for the first time as well as completely refurbishing our website. However, thanks to all of our hard work and the reception we have received so far, we are entering our second year in a really promising position.
That being said, I’d love to use this opportunity to again call out for new contributors and supporters! One of our main goals for the next year is to really expand our writership, and be able to put out far more articles. Whether, like me, you’re a graduate looking to get researching again, or if you’ve never written anything before but would like to give it a go, we’d love to hear from you! No matter how basic or developed the idea, if it’s Yorkshire based people’s history we want to hear it!
To those reading this who’ve got this far, thanks so much for your support this past year in liking, reading and sharing our work. We’ve loved the process of producing every article we’ve published so far and we have many more stories of Yorkshire’s people’s history still to tell so please stay tuned!
Red Riding 
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