A dozen students suddenly appeared on the steps of the Victoria monument in the centre of Bradford. They were all dressed in black – black jeans, black sweaters, black polythene capes tied round their necks, and they all wore red armbands. They climbed up the steps, turned round, and began to read in unison from the thoughts of Chairman Mao. A policeman at the foot of the steps tried to pretend that nothing was happening.

At roughly the same time, two miles or so from the city centre, a procession of more than a hundred or so students, led by a chance band, came swinging through the gates of the park in which the city's main art gallery, the Cartwright Memorial Hall, is set. These students, too, were dressed in black, but with white armbands. The girls had boots and long skirts that swung around their ankles, and they carried wooden home-made rifles. Behind them, in the procession, were four huge, twelve-foot puppets, made out of cardboard boxes painted black. The students carried slogans on banners: ‘Support Your Government’, ‘Down With Red Agitators’, ‘No Peace With Aggressors’.

In the city bus station, a bus arrived from Barnsley. About twenty-five students in black with white armbands, got off the bus and looked round. A van drove up, crudely camouflaged. Out of it leapt a student with a red armband. He picked out the four prettiest girls, told them to get in the van, and drove away. Inside the van, the girls had their white armbands exchanged for red.

Outside a bread shop in the city centre, a queue of two dozen students formed. They wore red armbands and carried the slogan ’Peace, Land, Bread’. Each student bought one teacake. Then they took their teacakes across the town to a disused post office that had been left to crumble in the middle of blocks of high-rise council flats. In the shop window were placards telling people they could take anything they liked from the shop, for free, and could leave anything they liked except money. (Hunt 1976: 66–67)