Seabrook wins Bread & Roses Award

A title from Hurst Publishers has won the 2016 Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing.

Jeremy Seabrook took home the £500 prize for his book The Song of the Shirt: The High Price of Cheap Garments, from Blackburn to Bangladesh, announced at the London Radical Book Fair on Saturday (7th May).

In The Song of the Shirt, Seabrook "shines a light" on the "seemingly forgotten" plight of Bangladeshi textile workers, and compares, contrasts and links their situation with the histories of Britain’s own textile workers at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

Guest judge Nina Power said: “Global passionate, informative: Seabrook’s The Song of the Shirt is an elegiac and enraging account of the garment industry, placing humanity firmly at its heart.”

Co-guest judge Owen Hatherley added: “This panoramic yet elliptical account of the textile towns raised and ruined (and back again) by industrial revolution in Lancashire and Bengal is unusual, powerful, and moving.”

The award was presented by Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, alongside Power and Hatherley at the London Radical Book Fair. The author was presented with a cheque for £500, with the award money funded by the General Federation of Trade Unions.

The Bread and Roses Award is awarded by the Alliance of Radical Booksellers (ARB), a recently formed organisation, which helps to support and promote the work of Britain‟s progressive booksellers.