Review: 'Slow Burning Fuse' & Anarchist Aspects

by Brian Bamford
Reviews:  'The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of the British 
Anarchists' by John Quail, published by Freedom Press [2014] price £15.,

and 'Aspects of Anarchism' published by the Anarchist Federation price £1.  
 Both available from Freedom Press: 
84b, Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. 

IN concluding his book 'The Slow Burning Fuse; The Lost History of the British Anarchists', John Quail writes: 

'...the anarchists of England have paid for the gap between their day-to-day activities and their utopian aspirations.  This gap consists basically of a lack of strategy, a lack of sense of how various activities fit together to form a whole, a lack of ability to assess a general situation and initiate a general project which is consistent with the anarchist utopia, and which is not only consistent with anarchist tactics but inspires them.' 

Mr. Quail admits that 'Such general Anarchist projects have existed, perhaps the best examples being the anarcho-syndicalist trades unions of Spain and France.' 

In his Forword to the Freedom Press 2014 edition of Quail's book Nick Heath*[1] writes 'I would take issue, as very much an organisational anarchist, with some of (Quail's) comments on organisation in his conclusion.'    

John Quail's book fundamentally emphasises the reactionary nature of English anarchism:  only capable of responding in a series of fits-and-starts to specifically social and political conditions.  In contrast to Quail, Mr. Heath no doubt believes what is documented in his Anarchist Federation's pamphlet 'Aspects of Anarchism' (2003) that 'The structure (of an anarchist communist organisation) must increase the ability of the organisation to perpetuate itself while its ends remain un-realised'. 

The historical characteristic of the British left in general has been to react to the agenda set by the establishment and initiatives developed by governments.  The Anarchist Federation in Britain is well within this defensive tradition of reactionary responses as is shown in their pamphlet under review 'Aspects of Anarchism' in the closing paragraphs of this booklet under the subheading 'Our Role' the author writes:  'Large demonstrations and strikes can often turn to violence and we should accept the need for self-defence.' 

Or the author writes:  'In non-revolutionary periods anarchist communists will be a conscious minority with “the leadership of ideas”.'  

There is much talk of 'revolution' here, but the writer mentions 'self-defence' because the nature of British politics is so much about reacting to the authorities in a tactical way rather than developing a serious strategy for social change.  And in the very next sentence the writer continues:  'Groups like the hit squads arising from the miners strike (1984-5) are genuine expressions of working class resistance.'  And then the writer goes on to argue 'we will need to defend ourselves against the violence of our enemies.'  This is all about 'defence' and 'resistance'  not about a pro-active program for social transformation, what's so revolutionary about that? 

The fact is that this is typical of the British left over the ages, and of the most memorable struggles in this country from the General Strike of 1926, to the Peace Movement of the 1960s, to the Miner's Strike of 1984-5, have been reactionary in that they have been responses to the actions of governments. 

Much of the rest of the AF's pamphlet in an act of belief in commitment or act of faith and of solving the problem of 'other minds', or as the writer puts it: 

'Determination and Solidarity:  To create effective organisations we must know our own and other's  [sic] minds, therefore there must be a high degree of communication, of sharing. We must set about creating aspiration, setting achievable targets, celebrating success, rededicating ourselves again and again to the reasons why we have formed or participate in organisation.'

When at random I compare this kind of feeble analyse to an interview in 1977, between the Spanish anarchist, Juan Garcia Oliver entitled 'My revolutionary life' the nature of the abstraction of 'Aspects of Anarchism' becomes clear.  When the questioner, Freddy Gomez asks 'What were the circumstances in which you became active in the libertarian movement and the CNT?'

Garcia Oliver answers:  'We need to be precise about this.  The idea of the “libertarian movement” surfaced well after the period we are talking about.  The CNT, on the other hand, was a long-established battle organisation which in those days marshaled revolutionary syndicalists, especially in Catalonia and therefore throughout Spain.  I join as a 17 year old.  I was working in the hospitality trade, as cafe waiter.  We had just seen the “La Canadiense” strike which is still famous because it was handled to perfection and won by the CNT's Light and Power Union.'

For people like Nick Heath they want to create an organisation or anarchist movement before there are anarchists, were as Garcia Oliver realises that it is in the practical life of the social body of the working class that anarchists are formed and from which the political organisation may then arise. I became an anarchist out of my experiences in the national strikes of engineering apprentices in the early 1960s; those experiences showed me first-hand how the bosses operated, and how the trade union officials and the local politicians operated, just as Garcia Oliver learnt through his experiences in the strikes of waiters for the abolition of tipping.

The point is the theory and the ideas evolve out of the shopfloor struggle.   It is this half-baked idea of the struggle developing out of the theory that is wrong with the approach of the Anarchist Federation: theirs is a form of cookbook anarchism in which the chef knows best. 

The dispute over what Peter Kropotkin stood for 'anarcho-communism', and what Bakunin believed 'collectivism', according to the anthropologist Gerald Brenan in his 'The Spanish Labyrinth' (1962), divided the Regional Federation of Spanish anarchists in 1888:  the argument was about whether anarchist organisations should consist just of convinced Anarchists or if all workers should be included if they were willing to join.  Brenan writes: 

'...with the introduction of Anarcho-Syndicalism in 1909, it was finally decided in accordance with Bakunin's ideas, the question of the nature of the future form of society became less importance.'

It is necessary to mention that this Spanish experience because the history of anarchism there is significant as a consequence of its success in that country.  Garcia Oliver responding to a question about the time when in about 1920 he joined the anarchist 'Bandera Negra' about 'some sort of understanding between syndicalists and anarchists' said:  'We were still a long way from what came later – anarcho-syndicalism – which overcame this dichotomy.  Anarcho-syndicalism allowed anarchism to become part and parcel of trade unionist groups which were imbued with anarchist thinking'.  Garcia Oliver said that he had joined 'Bandera Negra' by mistake and implies that at that time he ought to have been more syndicalist or 'revolutionary syndicalist', because 'Bandera Negra' (Black Flag) 'spent its time liaising – nationally and internationally – with other groups and its main activity was reading incoming correspondence and replying to it.'  The Spanish 'Bandera Negra', according to Garcia Oliver, like the Anarchist Federation was firmly against trade unionism and the CNT.

John Quail recalls the International Anarchist Congress of 1881 in London thus:

'The International Congress was basically an affair of and for Continental and Russian revolutionaries.  The minutes ... reveal that the English delegates played little part; yet many of the people involved were ... exiles in London and the British socialists that a more sophisticated libertarian philosophy was to develop relevant to British conditions.'  

Brenan has written of the same 1881 Congress:

'The Spanish delegate, when he went back to Madrid, took several new ideas with him.  (But) Spaniards lived then at a great distance from the rest of Europe.  Besides, anarchism had still a large proletarian following.  Under such conditions terrorist action was madness and would not find any encouragement among workers.  The new Regional Federation had in any case no need to appeal for violent methods.  Its progress during the first year or two of its existence was rapid.  A Congresss held in Seville in 1882 represented some 50,000 workers, of whom 30,000 came from Andalusia and most of the rest from Catalonia.'

In England, John Quail has demonstrated in his conclusion:

'The anarchist movement in England has shown itself capable of a progression of initiatives taken according to circumstances.  Take, for example, the beginnings of the squatters movement in London.'

Quail realises that the English anarchists are prisoner's of historical circumstances when he argues 'it is only when anarchist strategies develop [and] move from pin-prick defiance and piecemeal defence to confront and change all this that the anarchist movement will make history instead of being dependent on it.'  But this is true of the British left in general and even the trade unions, nay especially the British trade unions in this country, in so far as they are always reacting to events.  Perhaps it is because he now sees change in this respect as such an hopeless expectation in this country that I understand Mr. Quail is no longer sees himself as an anarchist.  As one northern anarchist once said to me:  'Each new batch of English anarchists have to learn the same old lessons every few decades, until in the end some of them give it up as a bad job.'

Starting in 1881, Quail identifies 'the first systematic propaganda defining itself as anarchist that had any effect within the (English) socialist movement came from America the shape of Benjamin Tucker's paper Liberty'.  It seems that Liberty was a 'lively and far ranging and even (Tucker) was prepared to give space for the Anarchist Communist view', though according to Quail, Tucker had 'a good eye for revolutionary humbug'.  And, on the English left there is so much 'humbug' about.

John Quail then goes on to remind us that '[t]he introduction of specifically anarchist ideas into the working class  movement was thus going on well before the alleged Year One of English anarchism, 1886, which saw the foundation of Freedom.' (p37)  (Freedom was finally closed down in 2014, and since then there has been an ongoing disputes between those who scuttled the ship of Freedom and their critics).

In conclusion Quail [page 333] writes:

'The anarchists have since shown the same astonishing ability to suddenly come from nowhere when everyone had assumed that they were finished...  A new movement emerged out of CND and the Committee of 100 and to dispersed.  The student movement of the 1960s again showed strong libertarian proclivities.   And that too seems to have disappeared.  I do not propose to talk about these movements in this book...  A bare mention, however, is sufficient to bear out the general thesis that has emerged throughout the book that the anarchist movement grows in times of popular self-activity, feeds it and feeds off it, and declines when that self-activity declines.'

In contrast to Quail, Nick Heath wants to keep the anarchist movement alive in the fallow years with what he calls the 'leadership of ideas'.  John Quail's book is very London oriented and it fails to include what the northern anarchist  James Pinkerton sometimes called the 'anarchist fellow travellers':  for in the same way that some say 'Christianity doesn't depend on the Christians', so very often anarchism doesn't depend upon the anarchists, as people like Colin Ward seems to have been aware.  William Morris was close to anarchism politically but his influence was larger than mere politics and people like both Quail and Heath will both tend to overlook the 'Arts and Crafts movement' intellectually dominated by Morris, John Ruskin's ideas and the development of the National Trust, and self-help societies, and other kinds of cultural and intellectual spin-off. 

Colin Ward's ideas developed in around 1960 is a more recent example of this approach, which in those days he described as 'permanent protest' or as some claim 'revisionist anarchism'.   In a soon to be published memoir by the veteran anarchist Laurens Otter writes:  'Colin (while retaining the term Revisionist Anarchism) was by 1961 defining his aim as “widening the sphere of  freedom”.'    Mr. Otter then writes:  'Ward's then desired journal (which became “Anarchy: a journal of anarchist ideas”) would from its beginning reject any belief in progressive fundamental change.'

These ideas of Colin Ward contrast not just with the kind of intellectual bigotry of Nick Heath and the the more refine historical determinism of John Quail, but also with the whole of left-wing ideology in this country.  This rupture which Colin Ward developed in the 1960s can best be understood by considering what George Orwell has to say in his essay 'Writers and Leviathan' (1948):

'The whole of left-wing ideology, scientific and Utopian, was evolved by people who had no immediate prospect of attaining power.  It was therefore, an extremist ideology, utterly contemptuous of kings, governments, laws, prisons, police forces, armies, flags, frontiers, patriotism, religion, conventional morality, and, the whole existing scheme of things.'

Anarchism, like the rest of the British left, inherited a certain evolutionary faith associated with the Whig theory of history, or as George Orwell writes:

'Moreover the Left had inherited from Liberalism certain distinctly questionable beliefs, such as the belief that the truth will prevail and persecution defeats itself, or that man is naturally good and is only corrupted by his environment.'

Elsewhere, Orwell points out in his essay 'Inside the Whale' (1940) that no 'real revolutionary feeling' had not existed for years and that the 'pathetic membership of all extremist parties show this clearly'.  In that situation the British Communist Party became a subservient tool of Russian foreign policy and the rest of the left became for most part insignificant.

It seems to me that it is hard to see how English anarchists can escape the 'fate of history' or what Mr. Quail calls 'its pin-prick defiance and piecemeal defence' anymore than the British left can transform itself from the perpetual reactionary role of resisting changes imposed by the British establishment.  Mr. Heath and his Anarchist Fed. show no sign of capturing the public imagination with his own belief in what Wyndham Lewis once called the 'associational habit' of membership organisations.

The Spanish anarchists, as Garcia Oliver says, benefited from having the trade union 'battle ground' of the CNT, and British anarchism gained vast influence when it had the peace movement to work inside in the 1960s.  Today, anarchism lacks any focus or serious social movement to seriously promote its energies, in that situation some of us have found it more prudent to adopt politics with a regional tinge.

*    Nick Heath leads a small sectarian grouping called variously the Anarchist Federation or A.fed. which grew up in the 1980s.  Unlike John Quail, he does not embrace the broader Church of British anarchism.

[1]  Since this review was first written over a year ago the Anarchist Federation: 'fight[ing] for a world without leaders'  has split in two, with Nick Heath and what was the old class war trend have now formed a group called 'communist anarchism', leaving the more modern trans-tendency inside the A.Fed, with its distinguished international affiliations, to soldier-on under the old AF label.

It was once said that the old Liberal Party MPs could just about fill a taxi, but now Nick Heath and 'communist anarchism' tribe could just about get by on a tandem made for two:  Battlescarred in London and Serge Forward in the provinces.   

For example, we learn that on Saturday 17th February [2018], 'anarchist communist militants met in Leicester to found a new organisation, the Anarchist Communist Group (ACG).'

“The Red Flag of Anarchy” by Andrew Lee

A Book Review by Christopher Draper

DO you remember those wooden rulers on sale at Woolworths with the names and dates of all the British Kings and Queens on the back?  That was the kind of history I learnt at school.  Regrettably, a lot of alternative history isn’t much better with a similar emphasis on London-based leaders.  I’ve always preferred to read about radical lives and politics away from the metropolitan bubble and Andrew Lee’s new history of Sheffield’s pioneering socialists and anarchists is a perfect paradigm of “people’s history”.

ANDREW Lee’s book embodies the ideals it chronicles with a beautiful cover designed by libertarian socialist Walter Crane.  The text is printed on decent quality paper and it’s lavishly illustrated with numerous portraits and political posters.  Computer screens might usefully churn out dry facts but Andrew Lee appreciates that wisdom is more surely gained through a slow, aesthetically pleasing book-read and there is a lot to mull over in “The Red Flag of Anarchy”.

Focussed on the Sheffield scene from 1874 to 1900 the author depicts a rich political culture created by predominantly working class activists of every flavour.  He doesn’t push any political line but the book is suffused throughout its 178 pages with an inspiringly libertarian spirit.  Lee’s achievement is to conjure up a vivid picture of a welcoming, inclusive yet militant socialist milieu.  Activists who for an all too brief moment managed to create the germ of a new society within the shell of the old. An alternative society that created communist colonies, embraced gay lifestyles, published a regular anarchist newspaper, operated a “Commonwealth Café”, organised picnics and ran raffles with books by Bellamy and Thoreau as prizes or alternately “A Handsomely Framed Portrait of Ravachol”!

“The Red Flag of Anarchy” is invaluable not just for its contents but as an inspiration and model for socialists all around Britain to get your shovel out and start digging down into your own local libertarian past.  I know from my own researches that there’s always been far more going on out of London than our erstwhile chroniclers would have us believe.

I have just two criticisms which I hope Andrew might address in future editions.  The first is the absence of an index.  This isn’t so much of a handicap as it would be in a text-only volume as the extensive contents list and numerous illustrations facilitate navigation but digitisation makes compiling an index simple and speedy.  Secondly I would like some analysis of why Sheffield’s socialist oasis became barren.  At the end of the book Lee observes, “It was the end of an era, everything was going to change…Parliamentary politics was to become the order of the day” but it wasn’t inevitable, what exactly occurred in Sheffield? My own research, for example, shows that in Leicester all manner of socialists cooperated for years until the foundation of the ILP in 1893.  Thereafter Leicester ILP refused to have any truck with local anarchists whose direct-action was thought detrimental to attracting votes. ILP sectarianism thus transformed Leicester’s lively socialism into bureaucratic electoralism. Were the same forces at work in Sheffield?

If we are ever to regain the radicalism and comradeship of early socialism it’s crucial that we identify what went wrong last time.  Andrew Lee reminds us of an era when Labour Clubs were far more than dreary drinking dens.  Available from Amazon for £10.00, in my opinion “The Red Flag of Anarchism” is the most valuable and entertaining study of grass-roots, pioneering Anarchy in the UK since John Quail’s classic “Slow Burning Fuse”.

Who Killed Freedom?: an unauthorised history 4.

The End but Not for Everyone…

by Chris Draper

ON March 10^th, 2014 FREEDOM announced:

“We have come to realise that a solid hardcopy newspaper is no longer a viable means of promoting the anarchist message…An underlying problem has been a lack of capacity to sustain it. We had hoped that Freedom would be adopted as THE paper of the anarchist movement…Although Freedom Press has changed from a political group with a particular point of view to a resource for anarchism as a whole, we have not managed to shake the legacy of the past and get different groups to back it as a collective project…the shop, publishing and book distribution will continue…As will the use of Angel Alley for meetings, events, offices…”   

Four aspects of this statement deserve close scrutiny:

1. no longer viable
2. a resource for anarchism as a whole
3. not managed to get groups to back it
4. shop, publishing, book distribution…meetings, events, offices.  

I dispute all four, interconnected, elements.  

Viability

FREEDOM’s viability was adversely affected by the development of the internet but in 2000 Freedom Press published a quarterly journal, the Raven, and a fortnightly newspaper so it should now be possible to finance a monthly paper.  The premises are owned freehold (and contribute almost 6K annual rental income), Aldgate Press printed the paper free (which alone equates to a 10K annual subsidy), hundreds of subscribers paid upfront, the paper had an established brand name and distribution network so FREEDOM enjoyed huge commercial advantages over other aspiring anarchist publications but as I’ve attempted to illustrate, successive collectives took all this for granted, alienated existing writers and readers and failed to secure a new constituency.

 

Resource for All

Under Charles Crute’s editorship FREEDOM welcomed articles of every variety of anarchist thought and practice.  When two articles presenting opposite sides of an argument were submitted both were published. Until 2001 FREEDOM relished controversy and open debate, after Toby’s ascendancy a narrow class-struggle line was enforced.  The collective’s claim to be a resource for 'anarchism as a whole' whilst consistently refusing to publish material that challenges their party line exemplifies their arrogance and dishonesty. 

Not Managed to Get Groups to Back It

I lied about disputing this section of the statement, for it indicates a rare flash of insight on the part of the collective.  As I argued from the beginning, groups, like SolFed and AF have enough problems maintaining their own organisations to put much effort into FREEDOM.  It’s the bit claiming:  

We have not managed to shake the legacy of the past'  that I dispute. 

Successive editors have not just shaken the legacy; the intellectual, moral and political legacy of pre-Crowe FREEDOM has been razed to the ground. 

Spoils of Class War (shop, book publishing, offices, meeting rooms etc)

Having provided a political play-school for aspiring class warriors FREEDOM newspaper is no longer of interest.  Like the Revd Toby Crowe, several members of the collective past and present have gained other pulpits for their sermons. Political organs from libcom to Morning Star now 'benefit' from the opinions of interns schooled in Angel Alley.   The alumni’s attention is now focussed on other assets in the FREEDOM portfolio and the collective privately admit that most were always more interested in getting their hands on the building than producing the paper.   'Within the Freedom Collective only a small minority were involved in producing the paper, not so much lack of commitment as not seeing it as central to what Freedom as a building was for.'   Vernon Richards must be spinning in his grave.

Conveniently situated between Aldgate East tube station and Whitechapel Art Gallery; the premises now provide convivial clubrooms for members and friends of the FREEDOM collective. Class-struggle groups might not have done much for the paper but ironically FREEDOM now provides them with convenient London meeting rooms.

FREEDOM’s book-publishing business was initially exploited by the clique to produce the decidedly dodgy,'Beating the Fascists'.  In 2014 they reprinted John Quail’s, 'Slow Burning Fuse' with the added 'benefit' of a new introduction penned by collective member and leader of AF, Nick Heath.

The collective have grand ambitions as Andy Meinke, who now runs the bookshop explains:

'At some point we want to move out of here, somewhere on a street front to get more passing trade.'  Sale of the freehold could raise around a million pounds.

Many of FREEDOM’s lesser assets have already been disposed of to friends and associates of the collective. In 2008, former FREEDOM editor John Retty discovered classic books from the shop of no appeal to class-struggle types were being destroyed en masse.  Confiding to friends at the London Bookfair that he’d managed to salvage a few copies of his own literary works, he appeared gloomy and depressed as he reflected on the significance of the destruction.

FREEDOM’s archive of historic books and newspapers has been similarly looted:

'We have multiple copies of pretty much every issue ever printed of our august newspaper, along with a big batch of foreign publications…Multiple copies are already kind of getting promised out…With the books, we’re hoping to keep a lot of them but of the ones which are going it’ll probably be first come first served.'   'I was in Freedom this week with Iain Mckay flicking through back issues of Freedom and War Commentary…We in AF have been discussing setting up an archive…its our history and pretty interesting too'.  Pretty interesting it undoubtedly is but is it not outrageous that individuals and groups like AF and Black Flag who unceasingly denigrated FREEDOM now exercise proprietorial rights over its assets?  

Authoritarian Asset Strippers

The takeover of FREEDOM didn’t require much planning, the new boys on the block were astonished how easily they gained control, 'When Vernon Richards died (2001) he handed over FREEDOM to the “Movement” on a plate but it was too surprised to notice, it was comrades coming out of the Anarchist Youth Network (AYN) who saw the opportunity with the paper and reclaimed it for class-struggle.'

Whilst the class warriors consider this coup commendable, to me it was invasive, cynical, dishonest and exploitative. The people who piled into FREEDOM had nothing but contempt for the paper’s political outlook. FREEDOM embraced a gentle, considered, constructive range of anarchist ideas and practice that contrasted sharply with the class-struggle politics of alternative anarchist organs (Class War, Black Flag, Organise! etc).  The new regime swept into power on a triumphant wave of youthful enthusiasm. Once Simon Saunders found his feet, stopped admitting his own ignorance and started proclaiming his infallibility there was no going back.  Gainsayers were systematically treated with contempt.

In 2006 Saunders described FREEDOM stalwarts as:

'reeking of allotments, of forgetting class, of irrelevance and reformism.'   

An obvious, yet demeaning, reference to Vernon Richards who ran a commercial organic market garden and Colin Ward who wrote extensively about allotments as a model of mutual aid.

Crowe, Saunders, Talent and associates ridiculed FREEDOM’s prefigurative politics and dismissed the paper’s distinctively anarchist critique of Britain’s welfare state, characterised by David Goodway as, 'Freedom Press being unswervingly hostile to the Labour governments and their nationalization and welfare legislation.'  

As a disenchanted subscriber posted on the History Workshop web-site following FREEDOM’s demise:

'The problem is that, for many years now, Freedom has been run by dimwits.  It has had nothing of value to say for a long while.   It is such a shame that this historically important paper has been ruined…In recent years, every edition of Freedom was anti-denationalisation and pro-welfare.  It was often difficult to tell it apart from a left Labour paper except for the juvenile photos of people in masks throwing things at the police.'

In 1986 Tony Gibson could still claim:

'FREEDOM has survived while many other anarchist journals have failed, because among its many virtues it has been flexible, intelligent and able to withstand periods when this or that bunch of bone-headed zealots have striven to turn it to the service of their own narrow creed.'  

From 2001 the 'bone-headed zealots' imposed 'their own narrow creed' with predictable consequences. 

Although the zealous class warriors had a range of apparently more appropriate newspapers available in which to indulge their class struggle fantasies they latched onto the fact that capturing FREEDOM offered them unique advantages.  FREEDOM loyalists were too polite, trusting and geographically scattered to react as swiftly and determinedly as the situation demanded.  Those of us who spoke out were constantly frustrated by the censorship and evasion of the new regime.

FREEDOM was taken over by entryists with no allegiance to the organisation whose assets they have now monopolised and exploited for more than a decade.  The collective have doubtless convinced themselves of their entitlement but are living off the hard won gains of anarchists they despise.

In the end just 2 of the collective of 14 voted against ending FREEDOM. For most of them, their heart was never really in it, their allegiance lay elsewhere.

Collective member, Nick Heath dismissed the newspaper as 'a pole for liberal anarchists' and used an internet thread mourning the passing of FREEDOM not to offer condolences but to advertise his own newssheet ('if you want to spread real class struggle anarchist ideas then think about ordering a bundle' ) until informed by a fellow contributor that it was;'in bad taste on a thread about the ending of another paper.'

Collective member Meinke was always, 'very sceptical of its (FREEDOM’s) liberal bent'  whilst Jim Clarke wasn’t at all bothered about FREEDOM’s disappearance:  

'I’m not sure FREEDOM had much of an illustrious history…I’m more concerned about Black Flag to be honest'. 

The tone of Charlotte Dingle’s joyful celebration of the ending of the newspaper more befits a party invite than the passing of an invaluable institution:

' * Waves * Hello, Freedom editor here…Frankly I am overjoyed that the paper is going online…(SMILEY FACE)…'

What is to be Done?

Those of us who loved FREEDOM are not prepared to sit back and see its ideas traduced and its legacy misappropriated by authoritarians. The primary aim of this essay is to puncture the myth and challenge self-serving accounts of the downfall of FREEDOM propagated by successive editors since 2001.

This is also an extended appeal to Steven Charles Sorba (Aldgate Press); Sonia Markham (Retired Illustrator), Richard Parry (Solicitor); and even rather plaintively to Donald Rooum (Cartoonist and collective member), the directors of the holding company, FRIENDS of FREEDOM PRESS Ltd. to belatedly get a grip on the legacy, both intellectual and material, handed down to us by anarchists who didn’t hide behind aliases or enforce their own narrow political creed.  Please do not allow the collective to sell the building without yourselves ensuring that the whole anarchist movement benefits not just the current ruling clique.

Finally the destruction of FREEDOM should give all anarchists pause for thought.  The very openness of FREEDOM left it vulnerable to subversion of its political ideals. We tolerated illiberal behaviour for too long and allowed authoritarians to take over.  FREEDOM stalwart Nicolas Walter had forewarned us:

'In a sense, anarchists always remain liberals and socialists, and whenever they reject what is good in either they betray anarchism itself.'  

A Final Challenge

I challenge any, or all of the current clique that closed down the paper to leave your comfy clubrooms for the day, come up North and politely debate, 'THE FATE of  FREEDOM' at the next (2015) Manchester Anarchist Bookfair. Hopefully you will offer a positive response, though I rather suspect open debate is not your preferred medium.                         

                                                            Christopher Draper, Llandudno, February 2015