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Charles Radcliffe, December 7 1941 is an English cultural critic, political activist and theorist, renowned for his association with the Situationist movement. A member of the radical direct-action wing of the peace movement of the early 1960s, he became a regular contributor to the anarchist press in Britain and in 1966 launched Heatwave, a radical magazine produced in London. It lasted for just two issues, but was cited in the Situationist tract On the Poverty of Student Life as an example of one of the "profoundly revolutionary tendencies in the critique of all aspects of the prevailing way of life" and its treatment of popular culture has been widely hailed as path-breaking. The critic Jon Savage said that one piece by Radcliffe "laid the foundation for the next 20 years of sub-cultural theory". Heatwave was closely associated with Rebel Worker, a short-lived but immensely influential magazine published in Chicago by Franklin Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont and Bernard Marszalek, to which Radcliffe was a contributor. They were members of the Industrial Workers of the World and had links with the Surrealist movement in France, the British libertarian socialist group Solidarity, and the Situationist International. Radcliffe became a member of the English Section of the Situationist International in December 1966, alongside Christopher Gray, Donald Nicholson-Smith, and Timothy (T. J.) Clark. He resigned in November 1967, and the English Section was then dissolved with the expulsion of Gray, Nicholson-Smith and Clark. Radcliffe subsequently became involved with the magazine Friends, sharing a flat with editor Alan Marcuson. Radcliffe is a descendant of Moll Davies and currently lives in Spain.
See also
Further reading
- Rosemont, Franklin and Radcliffe, Charles. Dancin' in the Streets: Anarchists, IWWs, Surrealists, Situationists and Provos in the 1960s as Recorded in the Pages of Rebel Worker and Heatwave. Charles H Kerr. 2005. ISBN 0-88286-301-0
