NORTHERN ANARCHIST on Death Row Part 2

by CHRISTOPHER DRAPER

CONDEMNED to death, in November 1897 anarchist Samuel Fielden of Todmorden sat alone in a Chicago prison cell awaiting execution on the 11th of the month. On 2 November the United States Supreme Court ruled there were no federal issues involved and it would not intervene. Only an act of clemency by State Governor Robert Oglesby might stay the executioner’s hand.

LIBERTY or DEATH?

THE political prosecution of Fielden and his comrades disabused radicals around the world of any lingering belief in the United States as the embodiment of liberty. The socialist historian Edward Thompson judged this state-sponsored prosecution the decisive factor in turning Britain’s Socialist League (SL) in an anarchist direction. William Morris (founder of the SL) excoriated the USA as “a society corrupt to the core and at this moment suppressing freedom with just the same reckless brutality and blind ignorance as the Czar of all the Russias.”

OGLESBY DECIDES

AT 9am on the eve of execution one of Fielden’s comrades cheated the hangman, ignited an explosive cartridge in his mouth and blew himself to pieces. Eight hours later Governor Oglesby intervened, commuting Fielden’s death sentence to life imprisonment but four of Sam’s five condemned comrades would still be hanged the following morning.

On Saturday 12 November Fielden was taken from Cooke County Jail to serve his sentence at Joliet, 30 miles south-west of the city of Chicago. At Joliet, Sam could leave his cell, exercise in the open air and resume his old work, labouring in the prison’s stone yard. Visits from family continued although little Alice no longer searched Sam’s cell as she initially did at Cooke County, looking for the candies her father, in happier days, hid around the house for her to triumphantly discover.

In 1890 a recently released prisoner, Thomas Broderick, claimed Sam was being singled out for harsh treatment, “Fielden, the English anarchist, shows the most marked fortitude and faces his dreary fate with wonderful patience and resignation. This has called down upon him the hatred of his guards. I have frequently seen the unfortunate man treated with great cruelty. Once I saw him chained to the wall for several hours and during that time all sorts of epithets were directed towards him by one of the guards and he was abused as though he had been the worst convict in the prison instead of one of the best.”

UNFOGOTTEN

“HAYMARKET MARTYRs” commemorations were organised around the world every eleventh of November and campaigning continued everywhere to secure the release of the remaining prisoners. After enduring seven years long years in jail hopes were raised in January 1893 with the inauguration of a new liberal State Governor, John Peter Altgeld who agreed to review the original prosecution. Confidence in Chicago’s police and judiciary had been severely eroded in the intervening years by a series of shocking discoveries. In January 1889, it was revealed that Inspector Bonfield, who’d led the police assault on the Haymarket meeting, “had for some time been receiving payments from saloon-keepers, prostitutes and thieves and had been trafficking in stolen goods”. Personal items stolen from one of the dead anarchists were subsequently found at the home of Detective Jacob Loewenstein.

On 25 June 1893 a magnificent “Haymarket Martyrs” monument was unveiled at Chicago’s Waldheim Cemetery, where years before Sam, the teamster, had regularly delivered decorative stonework. On 26 June Governor Altgeld formally ended Sam’s imprisonment with a report that rubbished the entire prosecution process that had in 1886 condemned him and his comrades to death. Altgeld emphasised this was no merciful pardon but a public declaration that Sam and his fellow Haymarket anarchists were falsely convicted and entirely innocent.

RELEASE

AT 4.20pm on 26 June 1893 Samuel Fielden, wearing a striped uniform distinguished only by his prison number, “8526”, was summoned to the office of Joliet’s Chief Warder. A special messenger, “Mr Dreyer”, handed Sam an engrossed document authorising his release. “Fielden took his pardon and folding it up carefully placed it under the brown and white striped jacket, worn black with long service, and without saying a word he reached out and grasped Mr Dreyer by the hand and then turning shook the warden’s hand fervidly.” The warden advised Sam, “If you call on Stewart Leland he will fit you out with the best suit of clothes that can be purchased outside of the World’s Fair City…Governor Altgeld has pardoned you and I can congratulate you and feel glad for I believe it is only your just dues.”

HOMECOMING

ARMED only with a rail permit and some pocket money, Sam, smoking a big cigar, left Joliet by the 6.15pm train for Chicago. He reached home, 117 West Polk Street, at 8.45pm where he was received by a large crowd. “His wife had been at the windows of their apartment on the second floor every few minutes on the lookout for him. Their little children, Alice who is 8 years of age and Harry who is nearly 7 were on the steps of the house ready to welcome their father while beside them were many of their father’s old associates…The meeting between the long separated husband and wife was tender though not demonstrative. They embraced each other for a moment and kissed each other for a moment and kissed each other tenderly. The wife murmured a welcome but the husband remained silent. He evidently desired to be stoical and did not want to give any indication of deeper feelings than a quiet sort of pleasure in returning home.”

POSTMAN BEN

THAT summer the Fieldens met old acquaintance, Benjamin Butterworth, the Walsden postman who’d come to Chicago to see the World’s Fair. In fact Butterworth made two visits, arriving first on Sunday 20 August, he returned the following Tuesday. “Glad that he had been permitted to shake hands with an old school fellow so far away from Todmorden, he heartily congratulated Mr Fielden on regaining his liberty after seven long years in Joliet.” For his part, Sam presented Benjamin with two “Haymarket” books, a sympathetic account compiled by lawyer Matthew Trumbull who’d been a Chartist in his youth in England, the other volume was Governor Altgeld’s justification for quashing Sam’s prosecution.

WORK

FIELDEN resumed his stone-hauling business, occasionally supplemented by driving a beer wagon. When he hadn’t returned to rabble rousing, after a year or so he was briefly pursued by reporters keen to depict a disillusioned anarchist but Sam wouldn’t oblige. “I will not change my mind on economic and social questions but I have not spoken at a public meeting for a long time and do not expect to.” When pressed on the matter Samuel revealed himself to be older and wiser. In the heady days of 1886 Chicago’s anarchists had convinced themselves they stood on the rim of a revolutionary cauldron; one more fiery speech and the workforce would erupt, overwhelm the plutocracy and wrest control. In reality the anarchists’ driving class consciousness ran far ahead of the everyday concerns of their fellow labourers. The anarchists provoked the tiger without the means to strike it dead. Now, on Sam’s release “He thinks the people too patient to effect any great reform in his lifetime”. He hadn’t abandoned his former aims or values but had emerged from prison with a more mature, considered anarchist philosophy which involved reconnecting with his family, nature and the land. He informed reporters he’d saved a bit of money and was looking for a farm.

SHOESTRING RANCH

IN April 1895 the Fieldens bought a small ranch situated high up in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, fifty miles south-west of Denver and a thousand miles away from the mean streets of Chicago. City newspapers lost interest in Sam although his arrival in the Rockies was warmly received by local reporters, with this particular October 1895 account republished in Todmorden:

“Up towards the western extremity of the beautiful La Veta valley where the ground begins to rise to form the might range of which La Veta pass is a gateway lies a lonely ranch…It stretches along the winding, tumbling, sparkling stream called Indian Creek… and in the vernacular of the western is called a 'shoestring ranch'. Great, graceful trees border the creek and lofty hills rise clothed in the richest verdure on either side. Westwards the huge mountains themselves tower above it. It is a romantic spot, looking secluded and peaceful enough to satisfy the most weary soul imaginable. It is the home of a man whose name has probably been spoken in every civilised country in the world and whose existence cannot but hold some interest for every working man the class whose cause he zealously advocated and risked his life for.

“He looks the typical ranchman already with his sunburned face, flowing beard, unclipped hair, wide hat and dusty farmer’s suit. He seems perfectly at home holding the halters of his horses and expiating on the good points of the meek brown cow which he had just purchased…He feels the wrongs of the people as deeply as ever but as a public figure his part has been acted…Only those who seek him with sympathetic hearts and congenial minds will hear his thoughts expressed. He keeps in touch with the radical world by reading the papers and pamphlets printed by the workers…His bright children whom he takes to their country school nearly three miles away; his faithful wife…his picturesque home, his domestic animals, the state of his crops and the prevailing market prices will now occupy all his energies.”

FRIENDS & NEIGHBOURS

FAR from the madding crowd the Fieldens were widely respected throughout this scattered, self-sufficient but close knit community. When Mr Butler, a neighbour, dropped by in June 1897 he expressed admiration for Sam’s agricultural achievements; his recently completed system for irrigating crop fields, his select herd of eighteen cattle, plus a few hogs and when Butler departed he was accompanied by several choice pigs he’d purchased to stock his own ranch.

In 1898 a few Colorado friends, led by the radical Rev. Myron W Reed, who chaired the event, organised a Denver “Haymarket Commemoration”. At this now rare public expression of his sustained solidarity, Sam “seemed imbued with much of his old-time spirit and fire… his body swayed with emotion, he gesticulated freely and his voice rang with indignation against the robbers and oppressors of the poor.” The event drew an unexpectedly hostile response from the Salida Mail, which doubted the validity of the Governor’s pardon; “Samuel Fielden, one of the anarchists who escaped the noose and was given a life sentence was present. It will be recalled that the arch sympathiser with anarchy, Governor Altgeld pardoned this man…sentenced for the awful murder at Haymarket square.”

William Holmes, a fellow Englishman and fellow anarchist, who visited the Fieldens’ the same year, reflected the other side of the Governor’s action, “(Sam) is happily in possession of good health and spirits and looks back upon his long years of imprisonment as upon a frightful dream…his soul is filled with eternal gratitude for his brave deliverer – John P Altgeld”.

Another old anarchist buddy, William J Lloyd dropped by in 1903 and as they talked, Lloyd observed that despite his rocky isolation Sam was “up to date on all passing questions”. One evening after dinner, reminiscing as they rode together along Indian Creek, Sam confided, “there was no conspiracy and none of the leaders knew of the bomb thrower or his intentions and so little did they anticipate violence that they brought their wives and little children to the meeting.”

LIFE ALONG INDIAN CREEK

IN 1905 when “little Alice” turned twenty-one she was struck down by typhoid but after eight weeks at death’s door made a full recovery. The four Fieldens lived, worked and prospered together and in 1909 added Benton Vories’ ranch to their holding, after paying him $4,200 so he could take up an appointment as the local District Water Commissioner. Sadly Sam’s wife Sarah didn’t have much opportunity to enjoy their newly acquired land as she passed away two years later. As Sam’s labouring life began to take its toll, Harry made more of the major decisions on the farm, assisted by his invalid father.

In January 1915, the local paper reported that the area’s farmers had collectively shipped 16 carloads of cattle from La Veta for sale at Denver, and was impressed by prices achieved by Harry Fielden’s 66 calves. Investing for the future, in 1916 the Huefano County News reported that “the Fielden ranch has been improved with the erection of a 20 by 100 foot barn.” As the years slipped by along Indian Creek, Sam’s children remained on the ranch, unmarried, until Harry died 2nd July 1972 followed by Alice on 11th March 1975. Samuel Fielden had passed away half a century earlier on 7th February 1922, just a couple of weeks short of his 75th birthday. All four Fieldens lie together in the simple, small, enclosed La Veta cemetery.

(Part one of this story along with many other fascinating episodes of radical history are archived and easily accessible on this NV website – CD 2021)

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NORTHERN ANARCHIST on Death Row Part 1

by CHRISTOPHER DRAPERr

ON 20 August 1887 a Chicago jury condemned a Todmorden man to be hanged for a bomb-throwing incident that killed eight policemen and injured sixty more. As the turning point in Chicago’s bloody class war this sensational case was reported around the world. Back home in England, when Samuel Fielden’s invalid father was informed of his son’s death sentence he became another victim and expired within the week. Details of the bombing and trial were comprehensively recorded at the time but Samuel Fielden’s lifestory has never before been fully told.

A Northern Childhood

Samuel Fielden was born on 25 February 1847 in Walsden, on the Lancashire side of Todmorden. There’ve always been Fieldens in Todmorden and Samuel’s father, Abraham (1816-1886) worked as an overlooker at the town’s enormous Fielden Mill, though Sam’s family occupied a much lower social level than millowner, John Fielden MP (1784-1849) whose statue graces the town’s Vale Park. Sam’s mother, Alice bore Abraham seven children although only four survived into adulthood. She’d endured an impoverished childhood selling polishing sand door-to-door. Abraham first met her as she hawked her wares around the houses in the bitterest of winters, trudging through snow in bare feet.

Sam learnt nothing of anarchism or socialism in his youth but acquired an overwhelming ethical sense from the non-conformist religion and politics of his parents. Tragically, Sam’s mother died in 1858 when he was just eleven. He inherited a basic understanding of politics from Abraham who campaigned on many social issues of the day, Chartism, the ten-hour day, the co-operative movement and much more besides. When Sam was six or seven, he learned to read by attending a local dame school for six months.

Work

Aged eight, Sam started work at Fielden’s Mill. His first job was to race along the machines removing empty bobbins, taking care to keep fingers safe from the moving parts. After a couple of years he was promoted to the heavier task of taking full spools to the weavers. At this stage Sam was a statutory “half-timer”, required to attend the factory school for half of his time at the mill. He became a “full-timer” at the tender age of thirteen when he transferred to working in the factory’s warehouse. After a couple of years he learned to weave and laboured at that until he was twenty one when he’d resolved to seek his fortune in America.

Awakening

Several incidents in Sam’s youth came to shape the character that was so forcefully emerged in later life. In 1860, at the conclusion of Sam’s factory schooling, Mr Harrison, his teacher was accused by a local Methodist of brainwashing his pupils with Unitarian heresy. When Harrison sued for libel Sam was required to give witness at a Liverpool Court hearing. He was overjoyed at the prospect. Not only did he get to spend a week away from home but visited the new Menai Bridge and at Liverpool docks Sam was thrilled by the tall ships bound for America. His imagination was stimulated by the “dime novels” he brought back from Liverpool and with the outbreak of Civil War in 1861, everyone in Todmorden’s thoughts turned to events in America as supplies of mill cotton from the Southern States slowed to a trickle. Initially Fielden’s mill supplemented the raw material with inferior Surat cotton from India but this so clogged the machines that production ground to a halt. Until hostilities ceased in 1865 milling resumed only intermittently and in the interim Sam carried tiles for workmen laying drainage for the ground on which the millowner’s magnificent new Dobroyd Castle would soon arise.

Sam learned of the cultivators of that Southern cotton when escaped slave Henry Box Brown visited Todmorden in 1861 and told of how, with the assistance of abolitionists, he’d gained his freedom concealed in a crate posted away from the plantation as a parcel. Sam’s inherent disrespect for elitism was reinforced when William, his older brother, who worked as a gardener for the Fieldens, was dismissed for showing insufficient deference. Sam’s oratorical skills which came to be recognised as his political strong suit were nurtured in the chapels of Todmorden’s Methodist circuit where from 1865 until 1868 he was admired as a fervent “exhorter” well on his way to becoming a full-blown religious minister but it was not to be.

Wanderlust

Drawn by tales of the “Wild West” Sam longed to leave home but obeyed his father’s wish to remain until he was twenty-one. He’d also given his word to marry Sarah Gill, a weaver at the factory. When Sarah promised to wait for him until he was established in America, he booked his passage and in July 1868 sailed from Liverpool. His first job on landing in New York was at Prentice’s Brooklyn hat factory, but he didn’t like the work or the wages and left after only two days. Moving north to Providence, he returned to his old trade of millwork before in March 1869 starting out West. He reached Chicago in August, by way of a bit of sightseeing at Niagara Falls. Coincidentally, the very first building he entered on reaching the city belonged to John Still and his brother who ran a plumbers business and originated from Todmorden where Sam had known some of their relatives. Less happily, it was outside this building that seventeen years later the bombing occurred that led to Sam’s death sentence.

That autumn of 1869 Fielden worked on John Wentworth’s farm and the following spring laboured at dredging the Illinois & Michigan canal. His religious fervour continued to diminish as his political awareness grew. As a deck passenger on a Mississippi steamboat, in spring 1870, he embarked on a working tour of the southern states that enlightened him on the falsity of “abolition”. The “liberated” blacks continued to be dispossessed and exploited by a myriad of sophisticated social and economic measures.

Chicago Again

On returning to Chicago in May 1871 Sam laboured around the region on a variety of navvying tasks until, after a year or so, he settled into heavy haulage work serving the city’s stone yards. Belying his big, rough, burly appearance Sam never neglected his intellectual development, spending every free hour at lectures or reading in Chicago’s public library. He returned to Todmorden in the autumn of 1879 for the first and only time. After embracing his aged father who was no longer the vigorous patriarch of memory, Sam visited the overgrown grave of his mother. He also fulfilled the pledge of two decades before and married Sarah, his childhood sweetheart. The pair sailed from Liverpool on the Germanic, arriving in New York harbour on 26 January 1880 eager to start their new life together in the “Land of the Free”.

Teamwork and Anarchy

Having saved his wages over the years, on his return to Chicago Sam bought his own team of heavy horses and worked for himself in the thriving stone haulage business. After starting a teamsters union Sam was duly elected Vice President. In the autumn of 1880 he helped reorganise Chicago’s Liberal League which existed to ensure the total separation of church and state. Over time he successively served as the organisation’s secretary, vice president and conference delegate and this involvement served to enhance his growing intellectual development, confidence and political awareness.

By 1883 his involvement with the Chicago labor movement brought him to socialism which evolved into anarchism. The following year he joined the International Working People’s Association with divisions organised on the basis of language; Fielden joined the English-language “American Group”. Confronted by a corrupt oligarchy of employers and politicians intent on smashing organised labor, Chicago IWPA was defiantly militant. Sam Fielden subsequently recalled, “I wish to say (we) were all anarchists at that time.”

Chicago’s May Days

On 3 May 1886 an “army” of Pinkerton thugs and city police opened fire on striking workers at Chicago’s McCormick Reaper Works, killing two and injuring many more. In response, Chicago IWPA organised a mass protest for the next day at 7.30pm, 4 May at “Haymarket”. There were to be three speakers with Samuel Fielden to close the event. The meeting was peaceful but as Sam was ending his speech two hundred armed police officers led by Inspector Bonfield rushed from an adjacent building, panicking the crowd. Fielden was ordered to cease immediately and assist in dispersing his audience. As Sam remonstrated a bomb arced through the air and exploded amidst the police, who responded by shooting indiscriminately, injuring officers and workers alike. Fielden was shot in the knee and when records were compiled there were eight dead policemen, another sixty seriously injured and probably similar casualties amongst the workers though, understandably, few of these injuries were reported to the authorities.

Judicial Murder

Fielden managed to limp home and the next morning, police, without warrants, searched the house, found nothing but arrested him anyway. At the police station Sam was sworn at by Lieutenant Shea and ordered to remove his bandage and expose his leg wound. Police Chief Ebersold pointing at Sam’s forehead said, “it ought to have gone in here!”

The authorities never claimed that any named individual made, threw or had prior knowledge of the bomb. No relevant evidence tying any suspect to the bomb was ever presented in court yet Sam, along with seven other anarchists, was charged with murder. Evidence wasn’t required, for the judge, prosecutor and jury were hand-picked and the verdict a foregone conclusion.

Verdict

The verdict was delivered shortly after 10am August 20 1896. Mr Osborn, the foreman intoned, “We, the jury, find Samuel Fielden (and comrades)… guilty of murder in manner and form as charged in the indictment and fix the penalty at death.” Samuel Fielden responded from the dock: “Today as the beautiful autumn sun kisses with balmy breeze the cheek of every free man I stand here never to bathe my head in its rays again. I have loved my fellow man as I have loved myself. I have hated trickery, dishonesty and injustice. The nineteenth century commits the crime of killing its best friend but as I have said before if it will do any good I freely give myself up. I trust the time will come when there will be a better understanding, more intelligence; and above the mountains of iniquity, wrong and corruption, I hope the sun of righteousness and truth and justice will come to bathe in its balmy light an emancipated world.”

“Murderers’ Row”

Fielden was imprisoned in Cook County Jail in a stone cell measuring 6ft by 8ft, reached by a flight of iron steps. In front of the cell ran a narrow footway. Sam occupied “Cell 31” in this section known as “Murderers’ Row”. Awaiting execution he was visited by his wife Sarah and their two children, Alice and Sam junior. He’d never seen his son before as the boy was born on 1 November 1886, six months after Fielden was imprisoned and, ironically, four days after the unveiling of a giant statue in New York harbour; “Liberty Enlightening the Word”!

Despite continuing world-wide protests and a further 1½ years of legal wrangling, it was confirmed that Samuel Fielden would be hanged at 12 noon, 11 November 1887, but this isn’t quite the end of the story….

(The concluding part of this story will be posted on NV in 3 weeks. Search our archive for more of CD’s articles of Northern Radical History)

Herbert Stockton’s Strangeways

(Northern Anarchist Lives – 6)

Christopher Draper

HERBERT Stockton was one of Victorian Manchester’s most effective preachers and Anarchy was his religion. After converting his sister and brothers to what he called the 'One true faith' all four teenagers led local Salvationists and constabulary a merry dance. Perhaps his dad was inadvertently to blame for he was an embittered old soldier employed as a prison warder at Strangeways where, in 1893, Bert was incarcerated as a reward for his evangelism.  Although Bert’s name occasionally crops up in the biographies of others, until now his fascinating life story has remained untold. 

Bert’s dad, William Stockton (1839-1914) served for seven years on St Helena as a Sapper with the Royal Engineers until, 'He received a severe injury to his hand while employed on the Public Works on the 11^th February 1867.  Having been accidentally caught in the machinery of a crane, three of the fingers of his right hand were permanently injured.'  An army Court of Inquiry concluded he was no longer fit for service and awarded him a non-residential 'Chelsea Pension'.  Although he’d laboured as a bricklayer with the Engineers, William was forced through invalidity to accept security work, initially as a prison warder and subsequently as a 'safe deposit attendant'.  

In 1869, William met Liverpool-born Julia Farrar and the pair set up house together at 14 Armitage Street in the Ardwick district of Manchester where Bert was born on 15^th July 1870.  Eleanor arrived the following year with Ernest (25.5.1874) and William (19.5.1875) completing the family. The children attended Armitage Street School before settling into careers: Herbert, mechanic; Eleanor, tailoress; Ernest, engraver and William, carver-gilder. Aged eighteen Herbert was the first to rebel and was soon assisting seasoned anarchist William Bailie, in June 1889, establish a new speaking station at Harpurhey.  Accompanied by Bailie and Alf Barton, Herbert soon made a name for himself.  At the beginning of August Commonweal newspaper presciently observed, 'Stockton has only lately begun speaking but promises to develop into a good speaker.'

Over the summer of 1889 Bert worked with Manchester comrades in “assisting the cap makers – men, women and girls – to form a union which is very much needed in this industry, where sweating is the order of the day.” In the autumn, the Manchester group supported strikers at “Berry’s Blacking Works.” Bert and his Socialist League (SL) comrades also attended the “Working Men’s Educational Club” at 122 Corporation Street where members assembled every Tuesday at 8pm.  'The branch entertained Kropotkin at the club on November 7^th, when a most enjoyable evening was passed.'  Three weeks later, 'William Morris lectured for the branch on the Class Struggle. The lecture was well received; brisk discussion followed; lecturer replied amid enthusiastic applause.'

At the end of 1889 the lease expired on the old clubrooms but in February 1890 Bert and his mates announced ambitious plans:

'Suitable premises have now been secured for the new Socialist Club.  It is our aim to make it a centre for Socialist propaganda in Lancashire.  A library, reading, recreation and refreshment rooms will be some of its attractions.  Aid is invited from friends who can assist either with fittings, furniture, books or funds. The Club, 60 Grosvenor Street, All Saints, is now open for members every evening. Commonweal and other literature is on sale.' 

The following month, “on Monday 31^st March Edward Carpenter lectured at the Club on the Present and Future Society”, but outdoor propaganda wasn’t forgotten.  Every Sunday the branch lectured on libertarian themes at Phillips Park gates at 11am and in Stevenson Square at 3pm and Herbert usually spoke at each venue. 

On Sunday June 15^th, Herbert Stockton was a key speaker at 'a large and most enthusiastic meeting' in Stevenson Square organised by the Branch 'to protest against the Freedom of the City being conferred on H M Stanley at which the following resolution was unanimously passed:'

'That we, citizens of Manchester, in mass meeting assembled, recognising that H M Stanley’s invasion of Central Africa has brought death and destruction upon the natives and that the object of his mission is to introduce into those regions the system of commercialism which means the economic slavery of the workers of this country, the only benefit of which will be to the speculating capitalists who can no longer make large profits out of British labour hereby indignantly protest against the action of the City Council in offering the freedom of our city and paying honour at our expense to this modern hero of Christianity and Commercialism whose civilising agents have been fire and murder, the elephant-rifle and the gallows…The meeting terminated by singing the Marseillaise and giving three hearty cheers for the Social Revolution and three groans for Stanley.'

This pattern of street corner lectures, occasional large scale events and contact with anarchists both local and national nurtured Bert’s political development.  Branch morale dipped a bit when William Baillie emigrated to America in the Spring of 1891 but Herbert responded positively, expanding his own contribution and in May 1891 crossing the Pennines to lecture for Leeds SL. Everyone’s spirits were lifted on August Bank Holiday Monday when SL members from all across the Midlands and North 'met at Matlock for an outing and social intercourse… No better institution can exist than one or two of these social gatherings for putting fresh life and go into the breast of any daunted propagandist…We climbed, sang and boated till tea,.. merriment being at the climax all through.” The Branch also opened a new social centre, 'the International Club, 25 Bury Road, Strangeways, open every evening'. 

By that time the national Socialist League, Stockton’s Manchester Branch and Bert himself were all converts to the anarchist cause with scant affection for state-socialism. Before the end of the 1891 Bert and his comrades called themselves 'The Manchester Anarchist Group (MAG)'  and regular reports of their activities appeared in the Anarchist-Communist newspaper Freedom. 

When a bunch of anarchists were lured into the Walsall bomb plot by a police agent in 1892 Bert was amongst their most active supporters.  A Handsworth insurance agent, Joseph Cavargua wrongly arrested as a suspect was declared guilty by the press merely on the mistaken basis that “he was a member of Manchester Anarchist Club”.  On Sunday 17^th April 1892, Herbert spoke out alongside David Nicoll, John Bingham and Alf Barton at a huge Walsall defence meeting in Stevenson Square but to no avail.
In 1893, Stockton had converted all his siblings to anarchism and with missionary zeal Bert carried the torch into the heartlands of opponents, lecturing Salford’s Marxist SDF on February 17^th on, “Why I am an Anarchist” and on April 8^th debating with a Temperance Reformer on 'Marriage'.  In June, young William Stockton followed his older brother’s lead with an outdoor lecture in Manchester on, “The Fallacy of Political Methods.”  But, encouraged by the success of their Walsall sting and the subsequent imprisonment of Commonweal editor David Nicoll, police began to crack down on the Manchester anarchists but first there was an opportunity for fun. 

In August 1893 anarchists from Manchester, Sheffield, Derbyshire and Leicester all travelled to Monsal Dale to enjoy fellowship, fresh air and the free exchange of political ideas:

'We roamed through splendid mountain and river scenery and forming in a group close to a waterfall, we sang revolutionary songs amidst the splashing of the water. The effect was enough to arouse the enthusiasm of all hearers. Thus without government, policemen or social democratic would-be political despots everything passed off harmoniously.  There being no authority we went where we liked and rambled in groups along the river banks till we came to some boards which said on them, Trespassers Will be Prosecuted. We held a discussion as to the meaning of the words and finally decided that they were relics of the Antedeluvian period and thought it best to knock the boards down and throw them into the river.”  After afternoon tea the comrades gathered for an al fresco conference “under the hill” where a fund was started to provide for Nicoll on his release, arrangements were agreed to “get the released Chicago Anarchists over here and to hold a big demonstration in the North…We then proceeded to the station and liberally posted it all over with little notices, such as Anarchy no Master; Revolution not Reform; Read COMMONWEAL; Read FREEDOM; etc. Then we went home after giving our comrades a hearty cheer for Anarchy and the Social Revolution.' 

On Sunday October 1^st, the arrests started as soon as the anarchists gathered at Ardwick Green and Bert’s brother, Ernest Stockton was amongst the four anarchists fined 21s each the following day.  Barton also had to pay for a replacement umbrella for Inspector Caminada after the copper wrecked the original in assaulting him!  Despite many more arrests the anarchists’ free speech campaign was maintained into the new year and the umbrella incident exploited for comedic purposes.  

To the tune of “Monte Carlo” the anarchists composed a twelve verse ditty entitled, “The Scamp Who Broke the Gamp at Ardwick Green, O

'Caminada showed his valour by knocking people down,

And using his gamp well,

Good citizens to fell,

He collared all the Anarchists and marched them through the town,

And put them in the Fairfield station cell.' 

'And he walks along the street with an independent air,

The people all declare,

He is a scoundrel rare,

His head is Wood,

And is no good,

Except to provide the pigs with food,

The scamp who broke his gamp at Ardwick Green, O.' 

Bert’s sister, Eleanor participated in the 1893 campaign and was arrested. Bert was arrested twice at Ardwick Green, on Sunday 29^th October and again on Sunday 12^th November. The first time he paid the 40s fine but the comrades couldn’t afford to keep paying out so on the second occasion Bert spent a month in Strangeways Prison where his dad was a warder.  The authorities won the war of attrition and diverted the anarchists elsewhere although they gained support from a few independent-minded individuals.   Dr Sinclair, a member of Manchester City Council, denounced the Watch Committee’s prejudice:

'The Anarchists seemed to have been treated more as Scuttlers than what they really were – a party of misguided young men airing their opinions.'

Fellow Councillor Canon Nunn defended prejudice and added his own bizarre recommendation that Manchester Anarchists 'substitute cricket or football for firing pistols at a target in a Deansgate slum'.  Bert exposed this calumny with a letter in the Manchester Advertiser. 

A few grassroots socialists supported MAG, but at the February Independent Labour Party National Conference in Manchester, 'several motions were submitted declaring in effect that the party had no sympathy with the Anarchists.'  Labour was already on the electoral march and desperate for respectability.  In March 1894 Ernest lectured at Walsall in support of the continuing campaign and Bert’s activism continued.  His weekly meetings at Philip’s Park and New Cross generally attracted audiences of 500 to 800, but his attention was temporarily distracted by 22 year-old, Salford born, Emily Bradney, who in the summer, he married at Chorlton register office. Eleanor, Ernest and William weren’t far behind in getting married, with Nellie teaming up with Alf Barton and Ernie keeping his relationship secret. 

In July 1894, Bert was involved in a deadly 'molehunt' with David Nicoll denouncing, in print, the prominent anarchist Henry Benjamin Samuels as a police spy.  Nicoll’s accusations met with a conspiracy of silence. Herbert Stockton’s efforts to convene a formal anarchist tribunal were also rebuffed.  Bert didn’t press the point and rather left Nicoll hanging out to dry.  It wasn’t Bert’s finest hour but it didn’t shake his commitment to the cause and besides his regular Manchester lectures in 1896 he travelled to Liverpool where he delivered 'interesting lectures to large and attentive audiences, with very good results'.  By then Herbert was recognised by the movement as a popular speaker who could draw in large audiences, and towards the end of 1896 he was lured down to London where he immediately made a distinctive contribution to the November, 'Chicago Martyrs Commemoration'; “Men of science, fame and workers have already spoken but I am going to speak on behalf of the nobodies…”  

Word soon spread that Bert was in town and when the Stratford Grove anarchists appealed in the pages of FREEDOM for “some help with speakers” they specified – 'if possible (John) Turner or (Herbert) Stockton'.  'On Monday February 5^th (1897) Comrade Herbert Stockton delivered a lecture on Anarchism v. Commercialism' at Christchurch Hall, Spitalfields which defined his brand of anarchy.  Bert claimed Individualist Anarchism, Social Democracy and Capitalism amounted to the same thing – “based on making people work and be good through material reward – Anarchist Communism alone striving for a system of society where man would act well to his fellows for the pleasure he would derive by it and he would work through his being interested in it.' 

In April, Bert and Anarchist-Communist comrades organised a 'Commemoration of the 26^th Anniversary of the Proclamation of the Commune of Paris' that, for once, included a great deal of constructive debate. Charles Quin emphasised that, 'The Communards were the first body of Workingmen to fight against governmentalism and the first who were not merely nationalist. It was not possible for any government to bamboozle all the people all the time… Government was but the shadow of their own fears thrown upon the mist of ignorance.” “Touzeau Parris said that some very striking reasons had been given for the failure of the Commune. One was that the country people did not understand what the Parisians were about. That might not be the trouble in England…but even here in London they must not forget that…the mass of the people were not with them…till the mass of the people knew what they were going in for revolt would only bring trouble and perhaps disgrace.'  'Herbert Stockton, while agreeing in the main with Touzeau Parris, deprecated the Social Democratic idea that they must not do anything till they were all in line and got the word to move. When men had got the spirit of revolt within them they could not wait for the millions of lazy devils behind but would act as their nature dictated.' 

In November, Bert chaired the November Chicago Commemoration but it produced more heat than light.  'Comrade Leggatt vowed eternal war against the present system of Society' whilst Frank Kitz reminded the audience 'how much better it would be if the Highlanders of Danghai instead of climbing the heights of the frontier of India and murdering men with whom they had no quarrel were to make a stand for their own homes in the hills of Scotland.'  French revolutionary, Georges Etievant, newly arrived after five years imprisonment for supplying explosives to Ravachol, then added his own pearls of insurrectionary encouragement (two months later he returned to France, stabbed 2 policemen, shot another and was imprisoned for life). 

Bert and his fellow Anarchists-Communists frustrated by the yawning gap between their revolutionary ardour and the slow, compromising reality of the English working class organised a London Conference for the 26^th and 27^th December to review and reorganise their activities.  Frank Kitz chaired the first day, Bert the second and the problem of print propaganda was a hot topic.  'Frank Kitz insisted on the usefulness of a leaflet propaganda by which the modern Socialist movement in England was begun…it reaches those who cannot buy a paper and might be started at any moment without causing the constant anxiety and hard work connection with the production of a paper.' 

Bert and a band of his associates weren’t to be quieted by new initiatives, which in any case were never carried out, and spiritedly laid into the one anarchist initiative that had endured. 'FREEDOM was described as a philosophical middle-class organ, not intelligible to the working classes, not up to date in late information and…less revolutionary than Comic Cuts, Ally Sloper and Sam Weller. It was edited and managed by an inaccessible group of arrogant persons, worse than the Pope and his seventy cardinals and written by fossilised old quill-drivers.'  

Throughout 1898, Herbert Stockton was living in London and headlining at revolutionary events like the Paris Commune Celebration and Chicago Martyrs Commemoration. Returning to Manchester on a short visit in July, 'our old and much-missed comrade Stockton' was feted as a celebrity.  Whilst relishing the revolutionary comradeship Bert was losing touch with the tragically moderate aspirations of ordinary workers. Perhaps Ernest Stockton was also unduly influenced by the metropolitan atmosphere when he visited Bert with his young wife, Louisa, and even younger sister-in-law, Esther. The newspapers relished Ernest’s resulting divorce, 'on the grounds of his incestuous adultery with petitioner’s sister…While in London petitioner thought her husband and sister were too free and on their return to Manchester petitioner’s mother shared that opinion and boxed Esther’s ears.'

Ernest’s infatuation with Esther proved as short-lived as his love for anarchy and he emigrated to New York without either and aged thirty-nine married another teenager. 

In 1899 Bert and his family returned North and settled in Sheffield with his sister who’d married Alf Barton. Together, the trio revived the local libertarian cause and in July 1899 FREEDOM reported that “the Sheffield Monolith once more resounded with the hum of successful Anarchist meetings.” Ignoring national policies, grassroots state-socialists could be comradely and when, in September, Bert embarked on a “ground-breaking” mission to Mexborough “they had a very successful meeting and received good help from the local ILP.”  Bert and Alf concentrated on anti-war activism in 1900 but the jingo’s were out in force and Herbert Stockton’s last recorded letter to FREEDOM reveals feelings of melancholy and defeat:

'Yes our propaganda has fallen on evil times. Who could have foreseen this ten years ago? Anarchists, Socialists are nothing nowadays…We must watch and wait and drift a bit perhaps…I send heartiest wishes that you may all long be spared to keep a “good heart” in the “one true faith” the hope of the ultimate

triumph of which alone makes life at present endurable viz: human liberty and happiness – Yours rebelliously, H STOCKTON.' 

When Billy MacQueen, an old comrade from his early Manchester days was arrested in America in 1902, Bert solicited money for his defence fund from his home at 39, Hammerton Road, Sheffield but in truth he’d lost hope.  Alf and Nellie remained iconoclasts but joined the ranks of State Socialists.  Nellie was big in the Coop movement and pioneered the white poppy as a peace symbol. After flirting with Communism, Alf became a Labourite and backed Britain’s involvement in WWI. 

In 1905 Bert moved back to Manchester and forgot all about the “one true faith”. His youngest brother William had abandoned hope decades before but after Britain declared war on Germany Herbert Stockton turned heretic and volunteered to kill for his country. Bert sailed from Southampton to Le Havre on 15^th August 1915 and served with the army in France until May 1919. He was never again politically active and died in Levenshulme on Thursday 18^th February 1937, aged 66.   

For Peace, Love & Anarchy

Christopher Draper

(nb This is the 6^th in a monthly series of “Northern Anarchist Lives”. 

Next month, “Everton’s Tolstoy”)