Left-wing political movements have always had to be better informed, more articulate and more questioning than those that seek to maintain the world as it is.

More than that, to be properly armed, those movements cannot allow the thinking to be done by just a small clique of intellectuals who pass down their wisdom from the mountain top — reading, ideas and curiosity have to go through them from top to bottom like words through a stick of rock.

The history of the working class is in many ways also a history of books and reading.

In the 1830s no respectable gentleman would have had the likes of Shelley or Byron on his bookshelves, which would have been scandalous.

These were works that radicals and workers were reading and if you wanted to read them too that’s where you would have had to look.

The early days of the trade union movement also mark the first time that workers had their own libraries. In any industrial town, if you wanted to read the economics of Adam Smith or David Ricardo you were more likely to find them on the shelves of a union’s library than in the homes of those who owned the factories or the mines.

The pages of radical history are full of books. This is because breaking with the way society is run also means understanding the ideas that help shape that society.

If you wanted to challenge, say, traditional marriage, the occupation of Ireland or anti-union laws you had to learn what it was you were fighting and how to build alternatives.

If you’re happy with the status quo all you need to do is sit back and let the world happen around you. If anything, being better informed about the world is a positive hindrance if you want it to continue as it is.

While many ideas can become toothless when sucked into academia or posed as belonging to some by-gone age, when push comes to shove ideas can be more dangerous than any single riot — because it’s ideas that turn riots into revolutions.

It’s not a coincidence that one of the most powerful things we can do to someone is “throw the book at them.”

Sometimes I’ve heard people counterpose reading and activism. It’s as if there are two kinds of leftist, one who reads and one who acts.

It’s certainly true that reading on its own challenges nothing, changes nothing, but in my experience the most dedicated activists, who stick at it for years, are also often the most vociferous readers.

That’s why books should be central to any political current we’re trying to build, and that’s why the upcoming London Radical Book Fair is such an important event for the left.

Bringing together thousands of people thirsty for ideas, the book fair hosts radical bookshops and publishers, fringe workshops and talks as well as exhibitions and art.

The Fair — next weekend — is being held in a huge converted warehouse in south London. The organisers (The Alliance of Radical Booksellers) have teamed up with a collective of DIY artists, Alternative Press, for the second year running under the theme Takeover 2015, hence the fair will be overflowing with the self-publishing, zines, poets, comics and alternative art — making it an incredibly rich and vibrant place to be.

It’s a good time for radical booksellers, with more people questioning and becoming radicalised while mainstream parties and media outlets are having less and less purchase.

As we look for alternatives we search for inspiration within the pages of partisan books.

There is no firmer place to stand as we attempt to tip the world over than on a stack of books.

• London Book Fair. May 9, 12 noon to 7pm at 47/49 Tanner Street near Tower Bridge. londonradicalbookfair.wordpress.com