Peter Good and the Cunningham Amendment

If you’ve been to many of the anarchist bookfairs in the UK you’ll probably recognise Peter Good: always a smile, always a bow tie, plus sweets (though I think one year it was home made wine?) for anyone who wanted to chat. Peter is the editor and printer of The Cunningham Amendment (named after forces slang for mixing everything behind the bar in a bucket). The final issue has arrived (vol.21, no.2 ‘Thursday 4th January 2024’) celebrating 50 years of publishing. 

To me, The Cunningham Amendment is happy-go-lucky anarchism informed by a love of Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of carnivalesque power of laughter. In their own words they stand ‘for independent anarchism’ and ‘The old solving dogmas are dead. The world is to be viewed from a bottom-up, street-level, perspective. Creativity begins in small-scale initiatives outside the control, or even the awareness, of the authorities.’ Lately, they’ve regularly criticised communication being colonised by ‘small electrical devices’. In a slightly plaintive note, they say ‘most of our battles have been with our own side’; naming the 6 radical factions that have ‘cancelled’ them, as opposed to three (unnamed) US Houses of Correction.

Reduced in dimensions, if not in style, this issue contains colourful letterpress snippets from anarchist aphorisms and reader poetry to their spoof religion of ‘Hugo the Happy Earthworm’. ‘Look after Hugo’s world – the top six inches of Good Mother Earth – and Hugo pledges to care for your children’s children.’ But this is the final issue. Peter writes ‘Me and my body have had some good times. Now the bad times come. Basically I’m fucked.’

So, comrades, treasure your copies of The Cunningham Amendment as the virtual-reality-with-footnotes version won’t be quite the same. Raise a glass or raise a smile – who can top the handmade, multicolour hedonism of the R Supward Press? Thank you, Peter!