Colin Ward.

 

Colin Ward

An interesting article on the English anarchist Colin Ward. I used to read the magazine 'New Society' and wrote articles for Freedom Press. I am certainly familiar with the ideas of Colin Ward. This article quotes the historian Raphael Samuels, who wrote of Ward's 'constructive antinomianism' which took its energy from having "no articles of faith to subscribe to, no canonical texts to refer to, no gods or heroes to placate."

Ward said himself that the three people who had influenced him most, were Martin Buber, the German anarchist, Gustav Landauer and the Russian anarchist, Prince Peter Kropotkin. If Colin Ward did have a canonical text, it would have been "Fields, Factories and Workshops" by Kropotkin. Ward used the term "anarchist seeds beneath the snow", to describe his central argument that an anarchist society is already in existence operating quietly beneath the weight of the state. For Colin Ward, "anarchy in action", consisted of everyday acts of human organisation rooted in voluntary associations, mutual aid, self-management and co-operation. Ward advocated for tenant run housing associations, worker co-operatives, self-build housing, allotments, friendly societies, and self-help strategies. 

The Royal National Lifeboat Institute, was for Colin Ward, a classic British example of a voluntary non-hierarchical organisation driven by mutual aid. The lifeboats are manned by volunteers and the organisation is financed by public donations and not by the government.