Who Killed FREEDOM?: an update: March 2015

by Chris Draper

IN 2014, the world’s oldest radical newspaper, FREEDOM, ceased publication.  In February 2015 I identified the culprits and causes of its destruction in a ten-page critique, 'Who Killed FREEDOM?'  Angry members of the collective attempted to portray my critique as mere personal criticism and proffered no substantive refutation, excepting the claim by Simon Saunders that, 'readership of the paper remained broadly stable from the time Vernon (Richards) died (2001) until it closed – around 300-400.'  More typical responses endorsed my analysis and forwarded supplementary evidence.  As a brief update I summarise a small selection of these new insights:

1.  In response to Saunders’ claim, I’ve been reliably informed that in the summer of 2003, Toby Crowe, the editor responsible for introducing FREEDOM’s controversial 'class-first' regime addressing a meeting at Height Gate, Hebden Bridge claimed, 'that the circulation of FREEDOM was then around 800 copies.'

2.  It appears the destructive implications of regime-change engineered by Toby Crowe were presciently anticipated in Spring 2004 by Jonathan Simcock of Total Liberty in the magazine’s editorial column:
'Sadly, the longstanding flagship of British Anarchist journals, namely FREEDOM, has increasingly abandoned the broader church of Anarchist ideas, and has metamorphosed into a poorer version of Black Flag.'

In the following edition, Simcock rammed home his analysis and critique:
'To reach ordinary people Anarchist papers need to re-evaluate Anarchist ideas and to hold an open debate. I am afraid the regular dose of 19th century Marxist and Class Struggle dominated viewpoints to be seen in FREEDOM will repel not attract people to anarchism. FREEDOM has lost its way.'

3.  A third correspondent offered a graphic illustration of the regime’s determined imposition of its collective will, not only on recent contributors but also on FREEDOM’s political legacy.  Colin Ward’s 1971 classic statement of peaceful, constructive libertarianism, 'Anarchy in Action' was, in 2008, given a makeover insurrectionary cover featuring hooded youths and an anonymous “anarchist” lobbing a missile.  A grotesque, perversion of the political philosophy of an author who believed, 'Ideas not armies change the face of the world,' whose self-declared intention was, 'to put anarchism back into the intellectual bloodstream, into the field of ideas which are taken seriously.' 

4.  An example of FREEDOM’s abuse of editorial responsibility so upset one subscriber that he recalled the incident (and forwarded the evidence to me) fully 5 years after the event, though not themselves the injured party.
'I have been a subscriber to FREEDOM for some 30 years at least, and so it is with sadness that I have decided I no longer want to receive the paper', wrote Ian Pirie to FREEDOM in January 2010. 'Two recent issues of the paper finally made me realise I had enough.'

Mr Pirie, whose father, incidentally had subscribed to FREEDOM long before him, was no longer prepared to put up with the paper’s use of gratuitously offensive language and celebration of violence.
 
Pirie cited recent publication of the 'Bookfair Song' with its first line ending 'you cunts', asking 'How are you going to get anarchism a broader public if you print such sexist and frankly juvenile, stuff?'  ('It’s the place to settle scores / And you know you’re getting yours” and “our scene is not a playground / For wankers to hang out').

Pirie further cited an article by Ian Bone praising the group Os Cangaceiros, who apparently 'join demos armed with sling-shots, rice flails and an array of martial arts weapons' and linked in the paper with Mesrine, described in the same issue as a 'loony who killed two policemen…beat his wife up…kidnapped and tortured a journalist.'

Wondering 'What has this thuggery got to do with anarchism?' Pirie concluded; 'I will continue to do my best to propagate the positive and constructive aspects of anarchist politics where I can. But FREEDOM is no longer any help to me in doing this.'

Rather than reflect on the implications of loosing yet another long-time subscriber the paper printed a mocking response from “Gawain the cunt Williams” (his self-chosen appellation) of the 'Whitechapel Anarchist Group':
'Ian Pirie wrote how this paper no longer represented his liberal whining politics because it printed the word ““cunt”” and apparently his pacifist eyes couldn’t handle it…  Throughout the ‘70s the feminist movement fought against its use. I wasn’t around then so I don’t know if cunt actually meant cleft of venus then, but I know that since I’ve been on this earth it sure as fuck hasn’t. Instead it describes people who are muppets, arses, tossers…  People who hate the word cunt seem to hate it because they’re tired of being called one or because they’re middle class cunts trying to impose some sense of decency on working class men…Makhno was a great anarchist because he used to shoot people. If you can’t handle people being called cunts then how are you going to handle an article about Mahkno?...  Finally, Mr Pirie, maybe you should realise that if the word cunt offends you so much it might be because you are in fact…a cunt. FREEDOM’s been doing a cracking job under its new editors.'!

Future updates will include observations and conclusions from inside the final collective and the Board of 'FRIENDS OF FREEDOM PRESS'.  For now I’m content to leave readers to contemplate the implications of an editorial collective that derides the constructive, intellectually respectable anarchism of Colin Ward as 'reeking of allotments, of forgetting class, of irrelevance and reformism' yet receives such glowing commendation from Gawain “the cunt” Williams.

Christopher Draper, Llandudno