Sandwiched between the People’s Palace and Barras Market in Glasgow sits a bookshop claiming to be ‘the best wee radical bookshop in the world’. ‘I see it at times as a wee oasis of information,’ says co-founder Robert Rae who, along with his late friend Billy McPeake, opened the store 12 years ago this month. 

First populating the shop’s shelves with their own books, the duo were determined to offer their customers political texts that they couldn’t find in other local stores. ‘There wasn't a left-wing bookshop in Glasgow at that point. We were trying to create a bookshop that was not affiliated to any political organisation but did have politics at its core.’ 

Covering a range of literature on the social histories of regions including Palestine, South America, Ireland and beyond, all books have a Marxist, anarchist and socialist leaning. ‘We’re trying to promote working-class history in the city but also tying that into what happens globally,’ Rae explains. ‘For example, the first recorded strike in Glasgow took place in this community in 1787. Six Calton weavers were shot and killed by the militia but you would struggle to find out much information about that.’

As part of an ongoing Pocket Radicals series, Calton Books has published a run of The Strike Of The Glasgow Weavers: 1787. ‘There's a lot of history out there in every working-class community but it's not always told or shared, and if we don't share it, it gets lost,’ says Rae. ‘For some people, picking up a book with a large amount of pages is off-putting, so it's better to get things in chunks. With [Pocket Radicals] you can actually put it in your pocket, go on the bus, train, whatever, and in 120 pages you've got the history.’ 

Calton Books, 159 London Road, Glasgow, , visit their website or Instagram.