A Gradely Book for Gradely Folk!

BOOK REVIEW by Christopher Draper

FOR anyone who imagines Sir Keir Starmer, a sharp-suited, Cambridge-educated lawyer and Knight of the Realm, is the embodiment of Socialism, Paul Salveson’s newly published evocation of the writings and cultural milieu of a pioneering Bolton socialist will prove a revelation.

“Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” celebrates, revisits and re-enacts a classic text (“Moorland & Memories”) published a century ago by Allen Clarke (1863-1935), an astonishingly prolific and wide-ranging radical journalist familiar to his contemporaries as the proprietor, editor and chief writer of such popular Northern newspapers as, “Teddy Ashton’s Journal – a Gradely Paper for Gradely Folk”. Clarke wrote poetry, short stories, social and political commentaries and philosophical essays. Although he was an exceptional talent, the popularity of Clarke’s writings with working folk is indicative of the vivacity and cultural diversity of the North’s pioneering socialist and labour movement before it fell beneath the wheels of electioneering and concentrated on getting careerists and snake oil salesmen into Parliament.

Salveson describes Clarke’s politics as, “Libertarian Socialist” but notes that “quite a big part of him leant towards anarchism of the non-violent Tolstoyan sort”. That’s how I first came across Clarke, whilst researching the street-level origins of British anarchism and John Tamlyn, a Burnley-based libertarian whose stories were published in “Teddy Ashton’s Journal”. Much of this very warp and weft of the everyday lives, political networks and cultural milieu of pioneering Northern socialists is still missed by London-centric historians and ivory-towered academics. In contrast Salveson digs down into his home turf and maintains living links with the people, places and politics he writes about. Through a hundred and eighty pages and twenty-eight profusely illustrated chapters, “Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” meanders around Clarke’s Lancashire homeland on foot, by bike and rail, teasing out the many and varied threads running through Clarke’s original 1920 volume. (If only Salveson had included an index readers would be spared page-turning meanderings in attempting to locate particular topics!).

Firstly we get an introduction to the man himself. Clarke was the son of cotton workers and he joined them as a “little piecer” employed in the mill when he was only eleven but the family were far from passive, ignorant victims of poverty. His father was a union activist, blacklisted for his beliefs and the family were avid readers interested in a range of intellectual topics. Appalled by the working conditions he experienced in the factories Allen turned to writing. Employed as a journalist by a series of Northern newspapers he also experimented as a newspaper proprietor and with publication of “Teddy Ashton’s Journal” hit upon a winning formula, which at its peak in the 1890’s attracted a readership of 50,000 every week.

The paper’s letters column, bulging with missives from weavers, minders and railwaymen, shows his readership was overwhelmingly working class. Clarke considered himself part of that great Northern industrial working class and his stories, both serious and comic, featured ordinary people’s lives in the mills, weaving sheds and mines. His political vision, though, extended way beyond the factories he thought so damaged the beloved landscape as well as workers lives. He delighted in nature and the wild places of the North. Salveson clearly shares Clarke’s wider vision of how socialism should and can offer so much more than higher wages and in tracing the threads of Clarke’s writings Salveson re-enacts some of Clarke’s original geographical and philosophical rambles.

Tolstoy, Gandhi, Whitman, Edward Carpenter and Michael Davitt all appear in “Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” as well as trams, windmills and steam engines. Besides the richness of detailed local history perhaps the ultimate value of this book is as a model and inspiration to readers to dig into their own home turf and rediscover the rich radical networks of mutual aid that thrived before our political vision grew dim. As Clarke recalled in “Teddy Ashton’s Lancashire Annual (1908)”:

“I remember Pendle,

Where in days gone by

Crowds of comrades gathered

‘Neath the moor top sky;

Oh the friendly greetings,

When our hearts were jolly bowls

With fellowship o’er flowing,

And the vision in our souls!”

(“Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” – priced £21 – is available at all good bookshops and WH Smith, or direct from the author at paul.salveson@myphone.coop)

Lear, Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Orwell

The Play’s the Thing: Orwell and Drama (Last of Three)

by Richard Lance Keeble of the ORWELL SOCIETY

19th September 2020

Drama at the BBC: The next act

Orwell’s work for the BBC is not to end in November 1943. For through his friendship with Rayner Heppenstall, a producer at the corporation, he goes on to write two fine dramatic adaptations – of Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, for the Home Service on 29 March 1946 (CWGO XIII: 179-201). The second, too often neglected, is of Little Red Riding Hood (ibid: 345-354). Just like the earlier adaptation of Andersen’s ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ for the BBC’s Eastern Service, this reflects Orwell’s deep interest in the fairy story genre – which finds its most famous flowering in Animal Farm – A Fairy Story, in 1945. And Orwell is to adapt his famous satire on the Russian revolution for the BBC in 1947. Crick describes it as ‘very stilted’ (1980: 493) while Orwell told his friend, Mamaine Paget: ‘I had the feeling that they had spoilt it but one nearly always does with anything one writes for the air’ (Lynskey 2019: 157).

ORWELL’s fascination with the theatre and Shakespeare in particular culminates in two remarkable ways. This first is his essay, ‘Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool’, published in Polemic, in March 1947. It has been strangely missed, or its significance downplayed, by the biographers.

There is no mention of the essay at all in either Shelden (1991) or Meyers (2000) while D. J. Taylor (2003) and Bowker (2003) only comment on it en passant. Crick (op cit: 438, 520, 522) first focuses on Orwell’s critique of anarchism and pacifism; in the third reference he points out Orwell’s ‘tempered pessimism’; only in the second reference is there any mention of Shakespeare as he describes it as ‘a profound comparison of the didacticism of Tolstoy with the tolerant humanism of Shakespeare’.

From British Library’s blog on Tolstoy and Orwell

Orwell bases his critique of Tolstoy on an obscure pamphlet in which he has damned King Lear as ‘stupid, verbose, unnatural, unintelligible, bombastic, vulgar, tedious’ etc. (1980 [1947]: 793). Tolstoy fails to consider Shakespeare as a poet. ‘Those who care most for Shakespeare value him in the first place for his use of language, the “verbal music” which even Bernard Shaw, another hostile critic, admits to be “irresistible”’ (ibid: 796). Tolstoy sees no justification for the presence of the Fool. But for Orwell it’s crucial. ‘He acts not only as a sort of chorus, making the central situation clearer by commenting on it more intelligently than the other characters, but as a foil to Lear’s frenzies. His jokes, riddles and scraps of rhyme, and his endless digs at Lear’s high-minded folly … are like a trickle of sanity running through the play….'

But Tolstoy’s essential ‘anti-human’ stance draws Orwell’s special venom. Indeed, what Tolstoy probably most dislikes about Shakespeare ‘is a sort of exuberance, a tendency to take – not so much a pleasure as simply an interest in the actual process of life’ (ibid). In other words, it’s a ‘quarrel between the religious and humanist attitudes towards life’.

An early English language edition of Tolstoy’s essay.

The plot of King Lear, Orwell argues, is essentially about renunciation. And this clearly resonates with Tolstoy’s own history. ‘In his old age he renounced his estate, his title and his copyrights and made an attempt – a sincere attempt though it was not successful – to escape from his privileged position and live the life of a peasant. … Ultimately, therefore, Tolstoy renounced the world under the expectation that this would make him happier. But there is one thing certain about his later years, it is that he was not happy’ (ibid: 799, italics in the original). Indeed, one of the morals of the play is that ‘to make yourself powerless is to invite an attack’. Moreover, all of Shakespeare’s later tragedies ‘start out with the humanist assumption that life, although full of sorrow, is worth living and that Man is a noble animal – a belief which Tolstoy in his old age did not share’. Against Tolstoy’s ‘other-worldliness’, Orwell celebrates Shakespeare’s worldly vitality, his love of life which he conveys, above all, in the ‘music of language’.

Orwell next moves on to Tolstoy’s pacifism – criticising it, along with anarchism, for being intolerant. ‘For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics – a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage – surely that proves you are in the right? And the more you are in the right, the more natural that everyone should be bullied into thinking likewise’ (ibid: 802).

In many respects, Orwell is presenting a very slanted view of Tolstoy. For instance, Peter Marshall offers a totally different picture of him in his monumental history of anarchism: ‘Although Tolstoy condemned the passions of greed, anger and lust as vigorously as any tub-thumping Puritan, he was no other-worldly moralist. He recommended the happiness which is to be found in a life close to nature, voluntary work, family, friendship and a painless death.’ Moreover, Tolstoy’s promotion of anarchistic pacifism stresses its impact on people’s well-being here and now. ‘He rejects the charge that without government there will be chaos or a foreign invasion. His experience of Cossack communities in the Urals had shown him that order and well-being are possible without the organized violence of government’ (Marshall 2008 [1992]: 370, 374).

Yet Orwell is using his picture of Tolstoy for essential rhetorical purposes – and as a foil against which he can deliver his wonderfully profound celebration of life – and the music of words of his hero, William Shakespeare.

Shakespeare not forgotten in Nineteen Eighty-Four

In Orwell’s last novel, the dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four (2000 [1949]), women are represented as both highly sexualised or the complete opposite – desexualised madonnas. In her essay, ‘Desire is Thoughtcrime’, Jenny Taylor highlights the novel’s ‘dichotomy between lust and utopian desire, between woman as Madonna and whore’ (1983: 28). Julia, the ‘girl from the Fiction Department’ – though perhaps also a Party spy engaged in a honeytrap operation – conducts a passionate, secret affair with Winston Smith. Yet in another crucial scene, Winston dreams of his mother, the good breast, as part of an Arcadian Golden age of plenitude. A girl comes towards him across the field. ‘With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside’ (op cit: 36). But her naked body arouses no desire in him. Rather ‘What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to an ancient time.’ And he concludes the scene triumphantly: ‘Winston woke up with the word “Shakespeare” on his lips’ (ibid).

This split in the representation of women, then, is highly problematic. Yet is it not significant that Orwell brings together the worlds of the unconscious, utopian desire and High Art with his final evocation of the name of Shakespeare?

Conclusions

Orwell’s love of the theatre begins in his childhood and remains constant throughout his life. It has been too often missed by biographers and Orwell scholars. Theatrical plot lines are dotted about – often wittily and imaginatively – A Clergyman’s Daughter. For instance, when Dorothy, while recovering from her breakdown, teaches at Mrs Creevy’s appalling school, Orwell has a great deal of fun describing the hoo-ha and parental protests that follow her class on Macbeth with its oh so controversial/shocking line ‘Macduff was from his mother’s womb/Untimely ripp’d’ (1976 [1935]: 387). ‘I do so adore Macbeth,’ he writes to his friend Eleanor Jaques, on 18 November 1932 and is keen to take her to see a production at the Old Vic (Orwell and Angus 1970, 1: 130-131).

Orwell does not particularly distinguish himself during his stint as drama critic (1940-1941) but many of his reviews capture his sense of humour, his love of bawdy, Max Miller-ish jokes and show him playing with ideas later to be taken up in longer essays. Then while working at the BBC, his drama interests inevitably spill over into his output. Along with all his often inventive and highly original arts feature programmes and political commentaries, he designs thirteen courses based on Calcutta and Bombay University syllabuses in English and American literature, science, medicine, agriculture and psychology and runs a series introducing drama and the mechanics of production, backed up with shortened versions of Indian plays. According to Peter Davison: ‘This had a direct effect in that two participants, Balraj and Damyanti Sahni, set up a travelling drama company in India on their return’ (1996: 117).

Interestingly, his fascination with fairy stories is reflected in two dramatic adaptions he writes for the BBC – of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ and ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ while his own version of Animal Farm is broadcast in 1947.

Moreover, the work of dramatists such as Anton Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde and William Shakespeare is constantly reflected upon during his writing career (though D. H. Lawrence’s short stories and poems especially interest him rather than the plays). The Collected Works, edited by Peter Davison (1998), indicates more than 120 references to Shakespeare, 96 to Shaw, around 30 to Wilde and 11 to Chekhov. Even while fighting in the trenches alongside Republican militiamen during the Spanish civil war in 1937, Orwell is reported by his comrade, Douglas Moyle, to find time to read his favourite dramatist: ‘I was surprised to find him sitting quietly by himself, sheltering from the cold wind, reading a little volume of Shakespeare’s plays. He didn’t speak, and I realized he would rather be left alone’ (quoted in Wadhams 1984: 80).

From British Library’s blog on Olivier and Leigh’s Macbeth

Davison even suggests that the concept of ‘Doublethink’ (the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time) of Nineteen Eighty-Four could have been drawn from Macbeth. In this play, the Porter refers satirically to equivocation. Standing at the Door of Hell, the Porter asks who knocks: ‘Faith, here’s an equivocator that could swear in both the scales against either scale, who committed treason enough for God’s sake, yet could not equivocate to Heaven: O come in [to Hell] equivocator’ (Davison 1996: 132). An intriguing idea.

One thing is certain, however: for it’s the Bard’s sexiness and love of life that Orwell, the theatre man, celebrates so movingly and memorably in his essay ‘Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool’.

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Stuart Christie: an insider's study of an authentic classical anarchist by Brian Bamford - Part Two

ANARCHISM IS not a very well understood doctrine in British politics. I realised this when Tameside Trade Union Council first published a booklet commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War in 2006 with Durruti on the cover. The then delegates of the Greater Manchester County Association of Trade Union Council clearly didn't appreciate the publication at the time, but during the meeting a large party of French trade unionists from the CGT [communist] happened to be present and while many of the local English trade unionists held back the French delegation waded-in to buy up most of the commemorative booklets we had to hand, and even later following me to the toilets to get extra copies.

It struck us at the time how utterly frigid the English trade unionists were compared to their French 'communist' CGT comrades.

This thought occurs to me now as I now with sadness write my friend and comrade, Stuart Christie's obituary. I remember that sometime after Stuart wrote the first volume of his autobiography 'GRANNY MADE ME AN ANARCHIST', I wrote a critique of it entitled 'God Help the Anarchist movement that Needs Heroes'. This in turn led to a bitter altercation between me and Stuart on the website 'Libcom' in which I believe he labelled me 'an arsehole'. However, in 2006, it was a measure of Stuart's nobility that when I invited him to write an introduction to Tameside TUC's Spanish commemorative booklet he had no hesitation in agreeing to do the job.

He probably did it because he knew me from when I first met him in Paris in August 1964, when he was about to go on to embrace the risky venture in his ill-fated journey to Madrid and ultimately to a Spanish jail for his part in a proposed attempt to assassinate General Franco. At that time we were all staying in a 'safe house' with Germinal Garcia at his apartment near Place de la République*. My wife Joan and I were returning from Spain, having first worked in Denia, Alicante throughout 1963, and later on in early 1964 moved on to La Linea on the border with Gibraltar where I worked for the MOD at the Gibraltar airport. While in Denia my eldest lad was born at the clinica there in September 1963. While in Spain and later Gib. we had taken photos of the conditions in the shanty towns in Barcelona and we sent back reports on working conditions over there for the FIJL publication Nueva Senda. At that time we were being debriefed, and thought Stuart may have been on a similar mission to us, but soon found out that they had other plans for him. At one stage he asked for our advice and was naturally interested in our own experiences.

Stuart was still in Carabanchel jail [Madrid] when my family again returned to Spain in early 1967 on our way to work in Gibraltar having had difficulties working as an electrician in Rochdale following my involvement supporting the national engineering apprentice strikes in November 1964 and February 1964. Having been blacklisted by the British MOD and throughout Gibraltar with private companies with contracts with the MOD and other contracts with the British authorities the only place on the Rock that I had a serious chance of work was with the Gibraltar City Council, supported by the Transport & General Worker's Union and Albert Risso who had close links with Sir Joshua Hassan the Chief Minister.

The anarchists on Gibraltar at that time were active within the Transport & General Workers Union and were basically anarcho-syndicalists. Stuart identified with the syndicalists, and had fallen under the influence of Bobby Lynn who he says 'had become the backbone of the Glasgow anarchist movement'. I'd stayed with Bobby Lynn in the Gorbals in 1961 and he gave me his copy of 'The Sexual Revolution' by Wilhelm Reich. Bobby was a member of the Syndicalist Worker's Federation when I stayed with him in 1961. As news leaked of Stuart's arrest Peter Turner [FREEDOM EDITOR] had contacted Bobby Lynn in Glasgow and up there they had assured him that Stuart was so dedicated to the peace movement and that it was not likely that he was guilty as claimed by the Spanish authorities. This may have influenced the report in the syndicalist Direct Action which took the line that he must be innocent, and Wynford Hicks on behalf of the anarchists argued on TV news that he was probably the victim of an 'agent-provocateur'. Another Freedom editor Vernon Richards argued more sensibly that it mattered little whether Stuart was innocent or guilty the anarchist position should be to support him.

For my part I knew what had taken place, but anticipating returning to work in Spain and expecting to continue to help the group of young Spanish exiles of the FIJL involved with the failed attempt, I decided to remain silent. Stuart himself had not been prudent before his departure for Spain and had actually participated in a BBC2 program entitled 'Let Me Speak' hosted by Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge, who had been a friend of George Orwell, had often identified morally and intellectually with Tolstoy and anarchism.

In his autobiography 'MY GRANNY MADE ME AN ANARCHIST'[2004] Stuart documents the sequence of events in the summer of 1964: 'In mid-July Salvador and Bernado [Gurucharri] told me I should be ready to leave for Paris by the end of the month. Everything was now in hand for my trip to Spain. Shortly before I left... I was invited to appear on what later turned out to be, for me, an almost disastrous chat show called Let Me Speak, on ...BBC2. Having a small spectrum of anarchists, with me and another young lad called Vincent Johnson representing the "revolutionary anarchists" Muggeridge asked me if I was sincere in my revolutionary aims...would I, for instance, given the opportunity, assassinate Franco?" It was an unlucky shot in the dark, for that was pretty damn close to what I was hoping to do. What could I say but yes?.'

It is an extraordinary admission for a revolutionary anarchist to make! I doubt that the Spaniards I knew in Paris or in Spain in the 1960s would have made such a confession on the BBC or before going on a mission such as Stuart anticipated. It's almost as if he had a death wish or secretly wanted to get caught. When we knew him in Paris in August 1964 he was hopelessly naive and clearly knew little of the reality of everyday Spanish life or working conditions. He struggled to pronounce the Spanish word for 'workers'.

On page 107 of his autobiography he writes: 'I may not have been wise or competent in what I did or the way I went about it, but I did not have the benefit of hindsight'.

Never mind 'hindsight' given what he had done did he have the benefit of foresight or even a glimpse of common sense? I say this knowing, as Stuart did, that other people suffered as a consequence of what he did and the mistakes that he and his handlers made at the time. I also say this as a friend of Stuart who exchanged correspondence with him regularly over the last few years, and had documented and detailed our differences in my earlier pamphlet. One thing that troubles me is not that he wore a kilt, but that he sported a war resister badge of a broken rifle on his chest while walking around Paris in 1964 as he carried our one-year-old son Deon. He told us that he'd visited Paris the year before in the Spring; it was more 'romantic' than in August. Being romantic was probably what attracted most people to Stuart as it was part on his charm.

Yet, when we had visited Ken Hawkes, then secretary of the Syndicalist Workers Fed., and his wife before we went to Spain in February 1963, the worst winter since 1947, they treated us to a bottle of Champagne as we'd just got married and reminded us to remove our Ban the Bomb badges before we left their house on Parliament Hill for Spain. I wonder why none of us thought to urged Stuart Christie to take off his tell-tale War resister badge?

I suppose that in August 1964, we were all a bit intoxicated by the atmosphere of a time in which Franco had just celebrated 25-years of peace, and a pale-faced Salvador Gurucharri and others had just been released from jail. In Paris, at that time, we were all in high spirits as things seemed to be moving in the right direction.

While there Stuart met other major figures in the exiled Spanish anarchist movement, the organised FIJL [Fed. of young libertarians] around the Internal Defence (DI), and including militants of long standing like Octavio Alberola* and Luis Andres Edo.

In his autobiography he describes what he did as 'the act of an adolescent' and he quotes a verse from Longfellow:

'A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' [page 120]

On reflection he goes on to admit: 'Now it will seem like to many a foolish, naive, impulsive act...'

and 'I cannot claim, either, that it was entirely altruistic - my motives were certainly in part a desire for excitement and adventure.'

On reflection he goes on to admit: 'Now it will seem like to many a foolish, naive, impulsive act...'

Essentially he was doing what we had done a year earlier when we went to Spain to escape from what then seemed like dreary Manchester; he was he says not satisfied with what would now be called 'gesture politics' of petitions and protests, and sought to engage directly with a struggle in Spain. Foresight or prudence would make cowards of us all; it was not part of his engaging personality at that time. It set Stuart outside the smelly little left wing orthodoxies which he left behind. Yet it led him to get a 'GO TO JAIL' card to a Madrid prison cell, and was for him a life changing event.

Once in Paris Stuart had made contact with the action groups of the exiled Spanish anarchist movement, organised around Internal Defence (DI) and involving militants of long standing like Octavio Alberola and Luis Andres Edo. As such during his disastrous mission he was later arrested in Madrid and charged with the possession of explosives. These were intended for an attempt on Franco’s life and he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Thanks to a continuing international pressure he was freed after 3 years.

Why was General Franco and the Francoist regime so susceptible to international public opinion in the 1960s?

I think it was in his book 'The Face of Spain' [1950] that Gerald Brenan tried to explain the mellowing of the Franco regime. In that book he explained how the Falange and those who adhered to Franco began invest in real estate and escape the relative poverty of the 1940s and 1950s. We too quickly forget that it was not just the Spanish working-class that suffered after the Civil War, but the Spanish middle-classes experienced insecurity also. My boss Senor Such told me of how in the 1940s everyone in the fishing village where I lived and worked in 1963-4 had suffered depravation after the war and some had to eat cats. Later on it had become possible to make some progress and by the time we got there in the early 1960s things were looking up as the tourists began to arrive and with the development building work on the costas things were much more prosperous for many including the low-level Falangists. This allowed some softening of the regime which may some helped Stuart Christie escape with what turned out to be a relatively short sentence of 3-years in the end. Had he been arrested some ten years earlier for the same offence it may have been an altogether different story, but by the mid-1960s the supporters of the Franco regime felt much more secure than they had been during the Second World War or in its aftermath when to some extent Spain had been isolated internationally.

* FOOTNOTE: In the early hours of 11 May 2011, 86-year-old Germinal García, a militant of the Juventudes Libertarias (FIJL) and the Paris Local Federation of the CNT in the 1950s and 1960s, passed away (in Paris). At the end of the Spanish Civil War, 13-year old Germinal had been interned in Argeles-sur-Mer concentration camp where an unknown English woman, to whom he was ever grateful, cared for him. Stowing away on a Danish freighter, the Kitty Skov, from the port of Barcelona, he escaped to the United States, where he remained for a time in New York, passing himself off as a French citizen, returning later to France to became active in the anti-Francoist struggle. Shunning the limelight, but always in the background with his strong sense of solidarity, Germinal’s apartment in the Rue Lancry was a safe haven for comrades who had escaped from Franco’s Spain — and for guerrillas such as Quico Sabaté whenever he was in Paris (it was also used by Stuart Christie prior to his trip to Spain in 1964). For that and for his ongoing service to the libertarian movement, Germinal won the respect and friendship of all who knew him. With his passing, we have the satisfying memories and the privilege of having known the friendship of a good comrade. Germinal’s remains were cremated in Paris on 17 May 2011.

Octavio Alberola, May 12, 2011 SEE ALSO https://www.facebook.com/TheOrwellSociety The Orwell Society - Home | Facebook The Orwell Society. 1.4K likes. The Orwell Society aims to promote the understanding and appreciation of the life and work of George Orwell. Join here:... www.facebook.com

STUART CHRISTIE DIES! Intro. by Brian Bamford

PART ONE - THE AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION:

Stuart Christie: a Scottish anarchist writer and publisher. Who when aged 18, Christie was arrested in Madrid while carrying explosives to assassinate the Spanish caudillo, General Francisco Franco. He was later alleged to be a member of the Angry Brigade, but was acquitted of related charges.

Born: July 10, 1946, Partick, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Died: August 15, 2020

Movies: The Angry Brigade: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Britain’s First Urban Guerilla Group Organizations founded: Anarchist Black Cross Federation, Cienfuegos Press

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BEYOND an OBITUARY!:

STUART Christie was an anarchist who had quality and consistency as well as quantity and a prolific output. From the early 1960s when he first engaged with Bobby Lynn and the Glasgow anarchists to his death bed listening to 'Pennies from Heaven' Stuart sternly stuck to his beliefs dedicated to a classical version of anarchism.

My last contact with Stuart was an unusually brief e-mail from him last November in which he wrote: 'Bearing up, Brian. Hope you are too. Un abrazo!.'

However I must offer a health warning, as in the 56 years since we first became acquainted in Paris in 1964, our paths have been very different. His commitment was to internationalist view while mine since the 1960s when I lived and worked in Spain has been mostly more parochial. My engagement with the anarchist movement in Spain and later Gibraltar was very different from that of Stuart even though we were functioning in the same organisation: the FIJL (DI). My role was purely one of propaganda and intelligence, and at no time was I involved in the violent activist deeds which were designed to discourage tourism or strike at General Franco.

My task and that of my then wife, Joan, was the much more humdrum; in my case one of working on the tools as an electrician, and delivering Butane Gas to the villages on the Cabo San Antonio in Alicante. Much more boring than 'daring-do' and prison life, but a way of soaking-up Spanish culture and everyday life as it was lived by many young Spaniards at that time who migrated to the coast from places like Albacete and Andalucia: working a six day week and paid 750 pesetas. Meanwhile, our FIJL campaign against Spanish tourism clearly failed, yet fortunately less tragically than Stuart's failed mission to kill Franco.

Among the many obituaries published on Stuart the most perceptive that I have yet seen has been that of the historian Julián Casanova in El País 'El escocés de la FAI que trató de matar a Franco' Casanova argues that Stuart Christie believed that 'a fusion of different forms of resistance such as the workers, the students, the greens into the language of political anarchism. Just as Bakunin, thought it was possible to harmonise individualism with the socialist collectivism.' Casanova writes: 'He [Stuart] liked the men of action, but in reality he [Stuart] and his wife Brenda went on to propagate forms of idelogy with various cultural manifestations, which demonstrated the force of culture with ideas.'

'

Stuart's wife Brenda died last year aged 70 years, from cancer. Casanova writes: 'The obituaries now record that his prime intention was to kill Franco. Yet he was a committed anarchist using his pen and the engaged in cultural aggitation, in times when the revolutionaries with "consciences" have past into history. Anarchist solidarity, that reflects on the concequences of industrial capilalism, nuclear disarmament, and abuses by the State. He was a Scot who would have loved to live in the golden epoch of Spanish anarchism.'

Julián Casanova knew Stuart Christie from when he met him at Queen Mary College, London, in the Autumn of 1985. At that event were other hispanistas like Ronald Fraser, and he speaks warmly of the seminars, dinners and debates over the Spanish Civil War, Franco, the monarchy, Juan Carlos and the transistion.

It strikes me that Casanova understood Stuart better than most of us.

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Comical Carryings-On Among the Comrades

by Brian Bamford

LAST Monday the latest meeting of the Friends of Freedom Press (the directors) ought to have been held at the building in Angel Alley just off Whitechappel High Street in London. Alas, when Ernest Rodker, a director and Friend, arrived in time for the meeting he found the building closed and shop shut up.

The meeting had been called-off at very short notice. Fortunately, more by luck than good management, no directors or ‘Friend’ from the North was already on the train bound for the South at the moment when the event was called-off at the last minute.

There is a certain slap-stick nature to the going-on at the premises of Freedom Press which matches most of the prejudices of the enemies of political anarchism.

Donald Rooum, who retired or resigned as a Friend of Freedom Press earlier this year, did so it is said because of certain over-wrought behaviour at some gathering over a year ago at which at least one Friend declared himself to be scared-stiff.

Absurdity seems to follow the English anarchists in the dealings with everyday affairs.:

In a book review of Malcolm Muggeridge’s book ‘Chronicles Of Wasted Time’, which Scott Alexander did in 2015, he reported upon some hilarious goings on at the anarchist or Tolstoyan Whiteway experimental colony originally founded in 1898, where the former editor of Freedom Tom Keele went to live after he abandoned the capital. Mr Alexander writes that:

‘The land was cheap in those days. And they (the founders) acquired it by purchase; then to demonstrate their abhorrence of the institution of property. Ceremonially burnt the title deeds. It must have been a touching scene – the bonfire, the documents consigned to the flames, their exalted sentiments. Unfortunately, a neighbouring farmer heard of their noble gesture and began to encroach on their land. To have resorted to the police. Even if it had been practicable, was unthinkable. So after much deliberation, they decided to use physical force to expel the intruder… The invading farmer was, in fact, thrown over the hedge in the presence of the assembled Colonists. There were many such trag-comic incidents in the years that followed; as well as quarrels, departures, jealousies, betrayals, and domestic upset. In the end, the Colonists found it necessary to re-establish their title to the land by means of squatters’ rights, and then proceeded to bicker amongst themselves as to who should have which portion.’

In 1909, Gandhi visited the Whiteway Colony in 1909, and pronounced it a failed Tolstoyan experiment.  As to the fate of Freedom, which ceased serious publication in 2014, well the jury is still out on that one.

Leedz Anarkyst - Greevz Fysher (1845-1931)

By Chistopher Draper

GREEVZ was one of the North’s most original yet least known pioneering anarchists.  From the economy to the alphabet, if there was a conventional system, Greevz had an alternative!

A Marriage Made in Heaven - and Leeds

Born John Greeves Fisher in Ireland on 9 September 1845, Greevz preferred the phonetic form of his name in line with his scheme for spelling reform.  Initially employed as an ironmongers assistant in Dublin, in 1877 Greevz moved to Wetherby to partner his cousin in his Leeds “Kingfisher” engineering business.  After his first wife died, in 1879, Greevz lived with her widowed sister, Charlotte Rowntree. Although both shared a Quaker upbringing Greevz had since progressed through scepticism to full-blown atheism and Charlotte wasn’t amused.  In 1884 Daniel Pickard told the Leeds Quaker congregation that:
“We much regret to have to inform the Monthly Meeting that John G Fisher has been for some time past an acknowledged disbeliever on the fundamental truths of the Christian religion”. 
Charlotte moved to America and in September 1887 at Leeds Register Office, Greevz married the love of his life, Marie Clapham.

Klever and Kreativ

Marie shared and encouraged Greevz’ iconoclasm and the joyful inventiveness that had already borne fruit. In 1884 Greevz had marketed, “Fisher’s Nonpareil Perpetual Kalendar” and the following year published, “Spelling Reform in Three Stages”.  He then developed an improved device for producing reading material for the blind. Marketed as the “Kingfisher Braille Printer” and adopted by Liverpool blind school it was only a modest success.

By then his cousin had left the engineering business, making Greevz sole proprietor. NGreevz re-focussed the business onto developing lubricants for industry. In 1883 he came up with “ACME” a unique, soap-based grease that proved invaluable.

In 1886 Greevz first mounted the pulpit to rail against religion and April found him at Sheffield’s “Hall of Science” delivering a couple of characteristic sermons.  In the afternoon he spoke on, “Spiritualism a Delusion” and in the evening, rhetorically reassured listeners, “Has a Dying Atheist Anything to Fear?”

Cheeky Lady

Marie Fisher was a secularist freethinker in her own right and according to her son, ”as a young country girl she used to tramp the 12 miles to attend the meetings of Charles Bradlaugh”.  Greevz and Marie first met at one of these secularist meetings and the couple’s selection of names for their 5 children signals their influences and advertises their radicalism;
* Auberon Herbert (1888-1932) - named after the individualist anarchist
* Wordsworth Donisthorpe (1889-1950) – another English anarchist
* Constance Naden (1891-1984) – female poet and philospher
* Spencer Darwin (1893-1968) – libertarian philosopher and discoverer of evolution 
* Hypatia Ingersoll (1899-1977) – philosopher martyred by Church & an American libertarian

Marie didn’t confine her interests to the home and every Wednesday attended educational classes at Leeds’ Mechanics’ Institute.  When local magistrates refused to accept affirmation as an alternative to “swearing on the bible”, she doggedly pursued the issue through the press.  In 1904 she travelled to the Rome International Freethought Congress as a delegate of the British Secular League and relished the perceived insult to Catholicism in the pages of “The Truthseeker”:
“The Pope thinks that the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church but he sees rationalism forcibly pronouncing itself within earshot of the Vatican. He admits he is grieved; possibly he trembles.”

Marie was an active member of the local Astronomical, Philosophical, Geological and Yorkshire Naturalists’ Societies and, in 1923 was elected as the first female president of the Leeds Philatelic Society.  She was a militant feminist and active suffragette and in 1920 Marie wrote to the press encouraging Leeds ladies to light up in cinemas after seeing notices permitting men to smoke but prohibiting women.

Freethought to FREEDOM

Encouraged by Marie’s own iconoclasm it wasn’t long before Greevz’ Freethought widened out into political activism.  In 1888 he supported the local strike of Jewish tailors and at the Clarendon Buildings denounced, “Starvation in the Midst of Plenty”.   He also began a six year campaign for election onto local School Boards.  Greevz opposed the growing State control of education and was determined to derail the process in Leeds but was never elected.

Even within anarchism, Greevz adopted an advanced position on children. In an article entitled, “Children as Chattels”, he argued against Benjamin Tucker, in Tucker’s journal, “Liberty”, that parents don’t own their children.  They certainly owe them a duty of care but children own themselves and should be respected as individuals from the start.  Greevz had real insight into libertarian learning and as well as generally campaigning against state control of schools he also specifically opposed the abstract curriculum that came with it.  In 1889 he argued in, “The Revolutionary Review”, “Keeping children from manipulating tangible objects and forcing them to occupy themselves almost wholly with symbols is a total reversal of the natural order of intellectual growth.”

Anarchism or Communism

Greevz remained forever sceptical of the millenarial promises of Communists.  Although he subscribed to the Anarchist-Communist journal “Freedom” he objected to Kropotkin’s assurances that history was inevitably moving in the direction of communism. History shows Greevz was right to be sceptical and nowadays individualism rules.  Whilst Kropotkin’s observations on mutual aid were a useful corrective to the excesses of social Darwinism, “Freedom” continued to over-egg the pudding and encourage false hope.  Greevz was one of a small group of English anarchists who fought against State control and argued for voluntary cooperation yet refused to accept that “Anarchist-Communism” could square the circle.  He was presciently aware of the group-think dangers inherent in all forms of Communism.

Natural Order

After anarchism and his family, Greevz loved cycling.  He’d started in Ireland on a boneshaker with wooden wheels and iron tyres but had still managed journeys of over 100 miles.  In later life he rode a variety of fairly modern machines and into his eighties he rode almost every day.  Greevz’ cycling exploits featured regularly in “The Leeds Mercury” where he revealed his recipe for a long and active life, “I consume a fair amount of home-made lemonade” and “I make my own porridge”.

Greevz was also keen on natural history, a respected member of several local societies, in 1930 he was elected President of the Yorkshire Naturalist’s Union.  His non-political lecture repertoire included; 
* “Some Curious Habits of the Indian Wasps”
* “The Sinistral Form of Limnaea Peregra”
* “The Structure and Habits of the Crayfish”

In later years Greevz combined an interest in wildlife with a passion for cycling and indulging his eccentricity he was regularly spotted cycling around Leeds with a pet jackdaw perched on his shoulder!

Yorkshire Anarchy

Greevz was a much loved local character but was also a serious, inventive owner of a small, successful business employing around 30 people.  As a Proudhonian advocate of small scale enterprise he never contemplated converting “Kingfisher” into a workers’ co-op but according to a former employee writing in the “Yorkshire Post”, “We all had a real affection for him”. 

Greevz followed up the great success of his, “Kingfisher Acme Lubricant” with the invention and production of an original,”Screw Plunger Automatic Lubricator” which continues, in modified form, in production today. Interestingly, for many years Greevz employed Leonard Hall, a pioneering Manchester socialist as Kingfisher’s sales agent. Greevz’ monetary theories were then critically examined in one of Hall’s political tracts, “Which Way? Root Remedies & Free Socialism Versus Collectivist Quackery and Glorified Pauperism”.

Whatever folks thought of his politics the business thrived and continues today, still under family ownership.  Greevz updated, patent grease fittings, have over the years been installed in vehicles ranging from Volvo cars through the European Airbus to NASA’s space shuttle transporter.

Catalogue of Surgical Specialities
Greevz was a keen analyst of the role money and markets play in capitalist society but in contrast to the Anarchist-Communists he wasn’t satisfied that problems of distribution and exchange would evaporate if capitalism were destroyed.  The debates appear abstract and protracted but the problem is real enough. 

Greevz and Marie also enthusiastically attacked traditional constraints on sexual relations and reproduction.  They didn’t merely campaign for women’s right to limit family size but bravely also advertised and supplied contraceptives in an age that was outraged.  In the 1890’s they freely supplied interested parties with their, “Malthusian Catalogue of Domestic & Surgical Specialities”. Greeves also campaigned against the labelling of children as “Bastards” and organised for the repeal of oppressive legislation as President of the “Legitimation League”.

Unlike Kropotkin, Greevz didn’t promise heaven on earth. Although he disagreed with Benjamin Tucker on some of the finer points they shared the same basic practical anarchist approach; “There are some troubles from which mankind can never escape… They (the anarchists) have never claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow from authority…  As a choice of blessings, liberty is the greater; as a choice of evils, liberty is the smaller.  Then liberty always says the Anarchist.  No use of force except against the invader…”

In the 1880’s Greevz campaigned against granting the Post Office a monopoly over telegram delivery.  In the 1890’s he argued against doctors claiming immunity from public scrutiny as he rejected all forms of professional cartel, “Classes based upon special privileges are a danger to the public liberty”.

Throughout his long life Greevz continued to resist authority and speak up for the dispossessed. Through the pages of “Liberty”  he continued to argue for the liberation of Ireland but unlike the Fenians he didn’t want an Independent Irish State, he proposed “No Government for Ireland!”  Aged 83, he wrote to the “Yorkshire Post” criticising the local authority who’d demolished the homes of the Beeston Community of Tolstoyan anarchists because they refused to fully comply with the Council’s petty demands.

Ashes to Ashes

Celebrating Greevz long involvement in civic life, in September 1925 the “Yorkshire Post” observed, “Mr Greevz Fisher, head of the firm of Kingfisher (Ltd) lubricators and oil
merchants, Sackville Street, Leeds, yesterday attained his 80th birthday and in celebration of this and his 50 years in business in the city his employees presented him with a barometer and case. Only last year Mr Fisher rode a push bike from Liverpool to Leeds.”

When Greevz died in May 1931 his cremation ceremony was marked by the “Yorkshire Post”, which also detailed the numerous organisations that attended.  Marie took over the business which on her death in 1950 was in turn run by her surviving children.

Greevz left a published legacy of over a hundred pamphlets, articles and letters that remain uncollected and, nowadays, largely unread. Whilst no single piece may be revelatory, taken together his life and work evidences and illustrates a vital thread of practical, home grown English anarchism that can still amuse and inspire.
 N.V. Editors:

‘Our thanks to Greevz’s great-grandson, Mr. William Hudson, for help with the family background. Mr. Hudson has written a fascinating family history about Greevz, published by and available from AMAZON - ‘Greevz Fisher of Youghal and Leeds: From Quaker to Individualist and Freethinker’ (2013).’

 Christopher Draper  (No. 10 in a monthly series of “Northern Anarchist Lives”, October 2016)

******

From Everton to the Asylum (1861-1948)

by Christopher Draper

John Coleman Kenworthy was one of the North’s most original anarchists. In the 1890’s JCK was Britain’s leading Tolstoyan but his brand of thoughtful, exemplary anarchism is anathema to today’s intolerant adolescent agitators. His ideas are ignored and his life forgotten. Kenworthy didn’t get a mention in Peter Marshall’s monumental 'History of Anarchism', nor George Woodcock’s five-hundred page chronicle and David Goodway overlooked him in 'Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow'.  Predating these publications, Max Nettlau’s 'Short History of Anarchism', provides a terse description, 'Christian anarchist writer and journalist' but perceptively emphasises Kenworthy’s Tolstoyan philosophy, 'is rich in libertarian insights we can find nowhere else.'

Liverpool Libertarian

As a Northerner and friend of Jesus it’s unsurprising JCK is overlooked by modern Metropolitan anarchists and even Nettlau failed to accurately record his birth in Everton on 2^nd May 1861. JCK’s dad, another John, was an often absent master-mariner who died in 1881 while his mother, Amelia nee Coleman, was a Manchester-born stay-at-home mum.

Raised as a well-educated Methodist, and early on influenced by the ideas of Emerson, Henry George, Ruskin and William Morris, from his late teenage years John was active in the Liverpool socialist movement. Kenworthy then joined Ruskin’s “Guild of St George” and in 1885 became an enthusiastic committee member of Liverpool’s Ruskin Society (LRS, founded 1883). The LRS programme of public talks brought Kenworthy into contact with a variety of interesting characters and he was instrumental in bringing William Morris to Liverpool to address the Society.  By then he was already a family man, with a young son, having married local girl, Eleanor Emily Robinson on 11^th September 1883 at St Catherine’s Church, Tranmere.

Throughout the 1880’s Kenworthy’s politics could be loosely described as Christian Socialist but reading a couple of Tolstoy’s books, 'My Religion' and 'What Then Must We Do', in 1890, prompted him to question received opinion of both Jesus and politics. Before arriving at any mature conclusion he departed for America to start a well remunerated career managing a big bacon factory.

Tolstoy Saves JCK’s Bacon

On Christmas Eve 1890 John Coleman Kenworthy and his wife Eleanor and three young children, George, Agnes and Frederick sailed aboard the Adriatic from Liverpool for New York but he never boiled any American bacon. After arriving in the States JCK read the Kreutzner Sonata and like a bolt from the blue realised commerce drove an immoral system and he must to strike out in a diametrically opposite direction, for as Tolstoy explained:

'We live as though we had no connection with the dying washerwoman, the fifteen year-old prostitutes, the woman fagged out by cigarette making and the strained, excessive labour of the old women and children around us who lack a sufficiency of food; we live – enjoying ourselves in luxury – as if there were no connection between those things and our life; we do not wish to see that were it not for our idle, luxurious and depraved way of life, there would not be this excessive toil, and that without this excessive toil such lives as ours would be impossible.'

Kenworthy abandoned business and sought the company of radicals like Ernest Crosby, the USA’s leading promoter of Tolstoy’s works and ideas. Tolstoy denied Christianity its pomp and pretension, insisting on the raw, radical teachings of Christ. Back to the basics of the Sermon on the Mount, 'Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.' Tolstoy’s respect for the Christian Church ended at the fourth century when it ceased opposing authority and climbed into bed with the Emperor Constantine. The Established Church abandoned the dispossessed to become the official religion of the ruling class, the Imperial Roman State.  The Christian Church sold its soul for a mess of potage.

Tolstoy rejected the State which he recognised as the embodiment of force and violence and loyalty to the State amounted to idolatry.  Kenworthy embraced Tolstoy as a Christian Anarchist comrade and so in New York he teamed up with John Edelman and ex-Manchester libertarian, William Charles Owen to found an American William Morris-style Socialist League.  After a transformative eighteen months in the States, Kenworthy returned with his family to work amongst the dispossessed of London’s East End.

'Fellowship of the New Life'

On 29 July 1892, the Kenworthys arrived in England aboard the Mississippi. The family lodged at 6 St Andrew’s Road, Plaistow whilst John worked on various cooperative projects associated with the Mansfield House University Settlement Scheme.  By exploiting old contacts, in 1893 JCK persuaded Liverpool’s Henry Lee Jones Charity to supply his projects with, 'two soup cookers and four children’s soup corners'.  In 1893, he distilled his experiences and political thinking into book entitled, 'The Anatomy of Misery; Plain Lectures on Economics'.

During his time at Mansfield House Kenworthy lectured to The Fellowship of the New Life and wrote for their magazine, Seed Time, which introduced him to Edward Carpenter, Bernard Shaw, Agnes Henry, Henry Salt, Olive Schreiner, John Bruce Wallace and Havelock Ellis.  In Seed Time he explained:

'In our bitterness of heart we have listened to the negations of Karl Marx and shut our ears to the words of the true prophets of the Reconstruction (Carlyle and Ruskin). The healing of society must come from within, through individuals and communities who by living and extending the new life, will at last cast off from Society the slough of the old.'

In 1894 JCK explained his libertarian approach to the anarchist journal FREEDOM under the heading, 'Reconstruction', he firstly expressed his disdain for electoral politics,'Why should we waste time, thought and energy in pulling the legislative jumping-jack which the exploiting classes have set up at Westminster for us to play with?' Latterly he outlined his constructive alternative:  

'If a real co-operative union of workers on a Socialist and fraternal plan were once largely adopted by men and women who possessed the needed right spirit, our country – nay Europe might be fired to a revolution of peace and industry, more deadly to classism, exploitation and oppression of man by man than the whole sum of armed uprising which have been since the world began.'

Communist Anarchism

During 1894 Kenworthy planted the seeds of this new society. He teamed up with John Bruce Wallace to found a 'Brotherhood Trust' in an attempt to organize a million enthusiasts within four years into 'a voluntary Co-operative Commonwealth'.  In May he left the Mansfield Settlement (where Bruce Wallace subsequently became Warden) to act as 'Pastor' to a newly established Croydon Brotherhood Society (CBS). Nellie Shaw described the proceedings:

'Every kind of crank came and aired his views on the open platform, which was provided every Sunday afternoon. Atheists, Spiritualists, Individualists, Communists, Anarchists, ordinary politicians, Vegetarians, Anti-vivisectionists and Anti-vaccinationists – in fact, every kind of “anti” had a welcome and a hearing and had to stand a lively criticism in the discussion which followed…Tea was provided at a moderate charge in the adjoining room where under the gentle influence of the cup that cheers affinities got together, friendships were formed, barriers of class broken down and a feeling of good fellowship prevailed…  It soon became apparent that the gospel of Tolstoy which Kenworthy preached was nothing more or less than Communist Anarchism.'

Having analysed the problems of society in his previous volume, in 1894 JCK published, 'From Bondage to Brotherhood', to argue that effective solutions required the creation of a new kind of co-operative 'Brotherhood' society to replace the cruel, competitive system that caused so much pain and misery.

Kenworthy didn’t confine himself to working within the Brotherhood movement.  In March 1896 he followed Frank Kitz and preceded James Harragan, both high profile anarchists, onto the popular Clerkenwell Green 'Free Discussion' platform.  In May he gave financial support to the 'Land Nationalisation Society – To restore the Land to the People and the People to the Land'.  In July he explained the affinity of Tolstoy’s ideas with those of John Ruskin, William Morris and St Francis of Assisi in the columns of, 'THE NEW AGE' and in September LIBERTY’s libertarian readers learnt, “Why I am Called a Christian Anarchist.”

To some anarchists, Kenworthy’s Christianity was a red rag to a bull, and ex-Unitarian Minister turned born-again Secularist, Touzeau Parris pursued him relentlessly in print yet JCK retained widespread support.  When a large public meeting to demand an amnesty for the imprisoned Walsall Anarchists was organised in April 1896 with Keir Hardie, Tom Mann and David Nicoll on the platform, it’s significant that Kenworthy was selected as Chairman. JCK’s name also appears on posters advertising the 1896 International TUC at Holborn Town Hall, alongside Kropotkin, Edward Carpenter, Louise Michel and Bernard Shaw.  In 1897 Kenworthy lectured the 'Leicester Anarchist-Communists' on 'Fighting the System'.  As he explained in FREEDOM, JCK advocated peaceful class-war, 'The only means to destroy the State is to withdraw from it, to consider all as traitors who in any way sold their labour power to maintain the State.'

From Russia to Leeds

Kenworthy travelled to Russia to visit Tolstoy in 1896 and afterwards the pair continued to correspond, which further increased JCK’s considerable prestige as a conduit of the great man’s ideas. Kenworthy believed Tolstoy had granted him exclusivity over publication of translations of his work in Britain.  In January 1897, FREEDOM reported JCK had sent copies of the anarchist paper to Tolstoy along with his commentary on the recent progress of the libertarian movement in England.  A trip to Yorkshire by JCK proved a great leap forward when local comrades established, “The Leeds Brotherhood Workshop” at 6 Victoria Road, Holbeck. “At present the efforts of the comrades are mostly centred in the making of bicycles and various electrical apparatus. One comrade makes the clothing that is needed by the others, whilst another mends their boots and soon hopes to be making them. Comrades wanting anything in the shape of bikes etc should make an enquiry…”  As Billy MacQueen commented in FREEDOM, 'The experiment is extremely interesting to us who have approached Anarchy from another road'.

That was the beauty of Kenworthy’s politics, 'approaching Anarchy from another road' yet some saw only an unappealing prospect. Although FREEDOM opened its columns to Kenworthy it often appended editorial put-downs:

'Surely both Tolstoy and Kenworthy will admit that there are many things in Christianity which no sensible person can accept since it is a compost of the teachings of many and various individuals, to regard all this as the word of God is really too childish.'  FREEDOM also wasn’t keen on Kenworthy’s advocacy of Tolstoyan 'Non-Resistance': “Since it is obviously a criminal thing to teach men to allow others to do as they please with them. It is simply a downright encouragement of all tyrannies and infamies that mankind has suffered through the long ages.”

This was a distortion of Kenworthy’s politics as “non-resistance” does not simply reduce to allowing others to do as they please.  The crux of JCK’s argument is that moral force can overcome physical force as activists like Gandhi, Rosa Parks, CND and thousands of others have since demonstrated. In a nutshell, Kenworthy argued that there aren’t just two options, supporting the system or fighting against it.  He promoted a third way, non-cooperation, doing things differently. It was an optimistic philosophy that believed in having faith in comrades to do the right thing. As Kenworthy explained in the Brotherhood’s magazine Seed Time:

'Our times impose upon us a necessity which was never before so extreme. We must organize, and that on a grand scale; we must confront capitalist organization by fraternal organization. The healing of society must come about from within; through individuals and communities, who by living and extending the new life will at last cast off from society the slough of the old.'

Whatever FREEDOM’s reservations Kenworthy’s Croydon Brotherhood flourished and as Nellie Shaw observed, fellowship trumped ideology.  Kenworthy’s crowd created a society that radicals wanted to be part of. They were no sackcloth sect but knew how to enjoy themselves.  A surviving sixpenny admission ticket for a January 1897 'Social Evening' promises; “Music! Dancing! Contraptions!” and includes “light refreshments” but advises at the bottom, 'BOMBS EXTRA. BRING YOUR OWN DYNAMITE.'

Anarchist Arcadia

It was the aim of the Brotherhood to establish self-sufficient land colonies and in January 1897 Kenworthy led most of the Croydon crowd off to the promised land of Purleigh, Essex where they’d acquired land from a sympathetic farmer. Over the next couple of years the community grew to include about 65 adults and children with the original core being joined by refugees from foreign regimes where Tolstoyans were harshly persecuted.

JCK continued to spread the political gospel and in April 1897 with the help of local residents, including Eliza Pickard and Tom Ferris, set up a Tolstoyan bicycle workshop at 6 Victoria Road, Leeds. In November, Eliza Pickard, who was later to prove an invaluable comrade, contributed an article on “Anarchism” to Kenworthy’s Brotherhood magazine.

After making a couple of visits to Blackburn at the request of the local ILP, in 1899 Kenworthy succeeded in establishing a Brotherhood workshop there in 1899, with the assistance of Ernest Ames and Tom Ferris who had transferred from Leeds.

Meanwhile divisions of opinions arose at Purleigh over the question of whether anyone should be allowed to just turn up and join the community and at the end of 1898 a group broke away to found their own colony in the Cotswolds, naming it 'Whiteway' (which still operates). Kenworthy stayed in Essex where his two sons, John and George, attended the Quaker school at Saffron Walden.

By 1900, largely thanks to Kenworthy’s efforts, Tolstoy’s influence reached across Britain. There was a Tolstoy Society in Manchester run by Co-op socialist Percy Redfern, a London Society organised by libertarian publisher Charles W Daniels and a Tolstoyan circle in Derby around the Quaker pacifist William Loftus Hare. In Spring 1900, Kenworthy again travelled to Russia to consult with Tolstoy.

Lively Editorship

On his return, JCK continued to lecture around the country until, early in 1902, he was appointed editor of the “Midland Weekly Herald” and took up temporary residence in Bilston.  It was to prove no sinecure and in July he was 'indicted for publishing in his paper an article whereby he attempted to pervert the course of justice'.  It was alleged that Kenworthy, 'commented strongly upon the action of the police in the prosecution of a man who was committed for trial…Kenworthy contended that he had acted from a high sense of duty.  A verdict of guilty was returned…and the accused was bound over.'  After publishing another article that summer, 'that was derogatory to the King…on Tuesday night a crowd repaired to the residence of Mr Kenworthy…  After booing they improvised a battering ram to smash in the door but the police prevented this. Mr Kenworthy appeared in the street and the crowd rushed him but the police again protected him from violence.'

In November 1902 the SUN newspaper published an article headed, “Among the Anarchists: The Gospel of Knife, Revolver, Torch and Bomb” identifying Kenworthy as a leading anarchist exponent of violence. JCK sued and clarified in Court that whilst he would readily describe himself as a “Christian-Anarchist-Communist”, 'his life’s work had been devoted to the warning of Anarchists from violence and of preaching the doctrine of non-resistance'.  'The jury found for the plaintiff' and Kenworthy was awarded £140 damages plus costs.

Trouble in Paradise

Whilst Kenworthy was at Bilston, the Blackburn Brotherhood moved en masse to Purleigh creating an unholy problem. Where Kenworthy promoted an inclusive, thoughtful, ethical and organised anarchy, Ames and Ferris and their acolytes practiced a primitive anarchism more akin to the seventeenth-century 'Ranter' tradition, 'Come one, come all!'  The Blackburn bunch exhorted all and sundry to join them and put no store on sexual exclusivity and at Purleigh this erupted into an interminable rash of prosecutions. Bringing tramps into the community allied to a refusal to immunise caused a fatal epidemic of smallpox that infected the wider population and invited legal action from the local authority. One of Ernest Ames’ sexual partners, Eliza Jane Hepples, subsequently sued him for the maintenance of their three children when he abandoned her for a younger woman. Meanwhile the 31-year-old Tom Ferris seems to have started a sexual relationship with Kenworthy’s daughter, Agnes, who was less than half his age.

Whilst all this was going on JCK realised that exclusive right to publishing Tolstoy in Britain had broken down and various other imprints were operating. In June 1903 Kenworthy threatened to sue Aylmer Maude if he didn’t desist from publishing Tolstoy’s writings.  Feeling under ever increasing pressure, on May 4^th, 1904 JCK left Liverpool for New York aboard the Teutonic.  He planned to spend time talking and relaxing with Alonzo Hollister of Mount Lebanon, Columbia, a leading authority on the Shaker movement.

War and Peace

On his return from America, assisted by an old 'Brotherhood' contact, Eliza Pickard, JCK tried to track down his daughter Agnes but with little success. In recent years former comrades had abandoned direct involvement in building 'Jerusalem in England’s Green and Pleasant Land' and instead pinned their hopes on electing Labour politicians to do the job for them. In the new century Tolstoy was but a fading star. Kenworthy was both politically and mentally bereft and his wife, Eleanor, was ill and had to move into a Kelvedon nursing home. In 1909 John Coleman Kenworthy had a mental breakdown and on 24^th November was admitted to Essex County Lunatic Asylum.

After leaving their Saffron Walden Quaker school, both of Kenworthy’s sons moved to live at the Whiteway Community as farmers and as “essential workers” were able to avoid the attention of the military during the 1914 war. By then their mother was dead (1912) and their sister, Agnes settled. After a year in the Essex Asylum JCK showed no sign of improvement and so that he could be nearer Eliza Pickard at Leeds he was transferred first to Middlesborough Asylum and then to the 'West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum' (latterly “Stanley Royal Hospital”, Leeds). JCK spent most of the rest of his life in the asylum. Eliza never married and supported JCK so faithfully until her death in 1942, that she was identified at probate as, “Eliza Pickard or Kenworthy”.

Forgotten by erstwhile comrades, John Coleman Kenworthy lived out his final years in 'York City Mental Hospital' at Fulford where he finally passed away on September 13^th 1948, aged 87. It would be facile to claim John Coleman Kenworthy was driven mad by an insane society but would it be entirely untrue? Perhaps his steadfast refusal to accommodate to the demands of an iniquitous system whilst all around voted for expediency isolated him beyond bearing but his anarchist gospel still inspires;

“Cease from following after those who dangle before you new Laws, new Acts of Parliament, who ask you to do nothing but – vote!...give heed to those who tell you that the first change is in your hearts, in your own ways of looking upon life and upon each other…if you workers so willed, the General Strike and General Co-operative would gain England for you in a week, and turn it into Paradise in a twelvemonth” (”From Bondage to Brotherhood”, 1894).

For Peace, Love & Anarchy

Christopher Draper, Llandudno (August 2016)

Frank Kapper’s 'Utopia-on-Tyne':

Northern Anarchist Lives – No. 5 by Christopher Draper

NEWCASTLE was slow to embrace anarchism.  Previous Northern Anarchist Lives instalments illustrated how Oldham, Leeds, Liverpool and Chesterfield all pioneered anarchy, but Newcastle soon made up for lost time.  Once Francis Kapper arrived in 1889 he began a chain of events that gained Tyneside a unique position in international anarchist history.

Born in 1858 in the Bohemian town of Slany, twenty-five kilometres north-west of Prague, Kapper grew up in a cultural vortex of nationalist and revolutionary politics.  Nowadays in the Czech Republic, Slany was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and more commonly referred to by its German name of Schlan.  Inspired by the violent rhetoric of Johann Most, in 1882 Francis declared himself a revolutionary anarchist.  When his activism attracted the unwelcome attention of the authorities Kapper opted for exile.

Around 1887 Francis arrived in London, where he worked as a ladies’ tailor and helped establish the Autonomie Club and its associated newspaper, “Die Autonomie”, edited by Norwegian anarchist Rasmus Gunderson.  After a couple of years work dried up and Kapper headed north in search of employment.  Settling in Newcastle, in November 1890 he founded the town’s first 'Anarchist-Communist Group'.  By the middle of the following month he was confident enough to advertise weekly meetings at Lockhart’s Café, Bigg Market.  Newcastle Anarchist-Communist Group’s (NACG) first guest speaker, on Sunday 28 December 1890 was 'Comrade Andrew Hall – the Socialist Navvy of Chesterfield' (see Northern Anarchist Lives 4), who 'addressed a large workmen’s 
meeting on the Quay, and in the evening spoke against Parliamentary action.'

In those halcyon days before 'Labourism' suffocated activism, NACG wasted no opportunity in steering the local labour movement away from the illusory appeal of electoral politics. In the new year NACG hosted a series of public debates where anarchist speakers opposed the statist program of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF).  In March the libertarians explained their positive alternative with a talk on, 'Organisation under Anarchism'.  Underlining the revolutionary aspect of their politics, on “Monday 22, Comrade Kapper opened a discussion on the Paris Commune. The opening was a very interesting review of the Commune and the events which led up to it. Great interest was evinced by the asking of many questions afterwards.”

Lockhart’s chain of refreshment rooms was a much loved feature of old Newcastle and in 1892 NACG switched their Saturday 8.30pm open meetings from the Bigg Market branch to “Lockhart’s Cocoa Room” at 37 Clayton Street.  In the same place on Mondays at 7.30pm, Kapper offered French classes to the general public.  An accomplished linguist, Kapper wasted no opportunity for politicking by providing students with excerpts from Kropotkin’s books as translation exercises. The group also organised Tuesday classes at the Cocoa Room for the study of Herbert Spencer’s “Data of Ethics” and even the NACG’s street corner agit-prop invariably included elements of education. This reflected the development of Kapper’s own anarchism which had moved away from revolutionary violence towards voluntary cooperation, yet still accepting others might find themselves trapped in circumstances leaving little alternative.

With NACG well-established, at the end of 1892 Kapper moved a few miles south to Sunderland to take up a tailoring job with Alexander Corder, a prominent local shopkeeper. Corder had recently moved into prestigious purpose-built premises (now Grade II listed) at 21 Fawcett Street, Sunderland after his previous shop had burned to the ground. “Lady Clara Vere de Vere invariably consults Messrs Corder about her bewitching ball costumes, and there could be no more bewitching ball costumes! The firm have taken a workshop on the ground floor 36ft X 24ft for the confection of tailor-made dresses and have a most superior cutter on the premises so that an elegant fit may be guaranteed.”  Alexander Corder proved a sympathetic employer and as a Quaker activist he publicly opposed the government’s “Irish Coercion Act” and he wasn’t the only patron Kapper acquired in Sunderland.

His new job didn’t divert Francis from politics as Freedom reported; “ A new group has been formed in Sunderland and as our energetic comrade Kapper is there now we expect it will soon be a big group”. In May 1894 the retail co-operative movement held its annual Congress in Sunderland and Kapper secured a ticket enabling him to attend discussions and debates.  A few speakers urged the organisation to go beyond cooperative retailing to promote producer co-ops and this ignited Kapper’s imagination. Since translating Kropotkin’s books for his Newcastle French classes he’d pondered the idea of growing crops under glass in cooperative enterprise as “anarchy in action”.  The Congress helped him formulate a cunning plan.  Conversations with two inspiring individuals at the Congress provided further encouragement.  Tolstoyan anarchist John Coleman Kenworthy (future biog) supplied ideological support whilst John Key, a government contractor and public house licensee offered finance.

In March 1895 Kapper and Key published a prospectus addressed “To all Friends and Sympathisers of Land Colonisation” and especially to the “more fortunate brothers and sisters” with jobs and therefore money to help launch “A Free Communist and Co-operative Colony.”  Instead of waiting for the revolution, Kapper aimed to show Kropotkin’s theories of mutual aid and anarchist-communism could be effected immediately.  He wrote asking him to act as treasurer for their intended agricultural colony, recognising that Kropotkin’s reputation would attract publicity and financial support for their scheme.   Kropotkin replied: “By no means should I like to discourage you and your comrades…” but he nevertheless declined to act as treasurer as he “had little confidence in schemes of communistic communes started under present conditions.”

Kropotkin offered advice but other anarchists came up with cash. William Morris’s Hammersmith Socialist Society sent money, so did an anonymous “Wealthy London Anarchist” (possibly George Davison) whilst Nannie Dryhurst and her lover Henry Nevison sent eight pounds. Sufficiently encouraged Francis Kapper got on his bike (bought on hire-purchase) and cycled around looking for a suitable site before settling on a smallholding near Heaton on the north-eastern fringe of Newcastle. A couple of year later the Clarion concisely described the enterprise:
'Several Newcastle Communists resolve to test experimentally theories propounded by Prince Kropotkin in his work La Conquete de Pain.  With that object they took a farm at Clousden Hill, consisting of twenty acres of inferior land… There is, we believe, nothing else like it throughout the length and breadth of the British Isles.  It is an experiment in Communism as applied to farm life.'

There was huge interest in the scheme and lots of applicants asked to join.  Although colonists came and went, a core of about twenty-four, including half a dozen children, settled.  Of these, only about a third could fairly be described as anarchists with the rest assorted socialists (SDF, Home Colonisation Association and ILP).  Some were local but they included Southerners, Scots, a Belgian, a German, a Dane, two Czechs and a Swiss.  There were tailors, a shoemaker, a philosopher, coal miner, engineer, a clerk and a couple of gardeners but precious few had any farming experience.  On the face of it, a mixed bunch facing a stiff challenge. 

Even the anarchist faction weren’t of one mind and it’s worth examining who they were.  Besides Kapper there were six more anarchists, four single men, Richard Gundersen, Christopher Davis, Ladislaus Gumplowitz and Francis Sedlak and married couple, “Frank” and “Elizabeth” Starr and their four year old daughter, Amy. Richard was the nineteen year old son of Rasmus Gundersen, Kapper’s comrade back in the days of the Autonomie Club.  Frances Joseph Starr (1866-1931) and Amy Elizabeth Starr (b.1869) were a London couple keen to give practical effect to their Tolstoyan beliefs.  Francis Sedlak (1873-1935) was a countryman of Kapper’s and a Tolstoyan who’d travelled widely, including a trip to Russia to meet the man himself.  A determined pacifist, Sedlak had already seen the inside of several jails. Gumplowicz (1869-1942), an old comrade of Gustave Landauer, was a German
Professor of Law, recently released from a Berlin prison for upsetting the authorities by speaking up for the unemployed. Christopher Charles Davis (b.1863) was also not long out of gaol. Cruelly abused as a child by his father, in the words of his friends:
'Davis grew up to be a street-ruffian, a terror to all respectable folk, oftener in prison than out, until (in 1886) chancing to be on Clerkenwell Green he heard an exposition of Socialism…a hope was kindled in his mind…the old rackety life became a thing of the past”. In 1893 Davis made a dramatic political protest, smashing a Birmingham jeweller’s window with a brick and hurling the valuable contents across the highway. In court Davis made an impassioned political plea from the dock concluding with an invitation to the jury to refuse judgement and instead walk out of the building. They declined to do so and as he was sentenced to 15 months with hard labour he defiantly yelled, “Hurrah for Anarchy!'

At Clousden, even the jailbirds proved pacific. Chris Davies was celebrated for his entertaining recitations whilst one of the state-socialists, Rudolph Wunderlich (1869-1933), was a wizard on the mandolin but finance remained a continuing anxiety; there was sufficient to cover the lease but seeds, animals, greenhouses, tools and much besides also had to be paid for.  A few colonists contributed a little capital to the scheme and Kapper kept working at Corder’s for a while to supply supplementary income but money was tight.  When anarchist pioneer of the Garden City Movement, Bernhard Kampffmeyer, visited in October 1895 he reported his admiration and anxiety to Freedom:
'All that I saw there seemed to me very interesting; the men appeared to me skilful, practical, industrious and to possess the essential quality of being able to agree with each other. In short the general conditions promise a success in my opinion. But one thing is lacking: - Too eager to realise their ideal, too sanguine to wait any longer, these men made perhaps the mistake of starting without the necessary capital…'

Kropotkin visited in January 1896 and appeared reassured, “he was much gratified with what he had seen and the manner in which the farm was being worked.” Tom Mann, Jim Connell, Tom Maguire and Elisee Reclus all witnessed Clousden’s anarchy in action. There was so much interest that eventually the community asked intending visitors to book ahead and arrive at convenient times, allowing colonists adequate opportunity to work their smallholding. 

Visited by a reporter from the Northern Echo in August 1896:
'Whilst we stood in the tomato house admiring the splendid fruit produced by the Excelsior, General Grant and Perfection varieties Mr Kapper related the conditions under which they first set to work.  The holding consisted of twelve acres of grassland, six acres of standing oats and a quarter acre of potatoes. There was a house, barn, pig-sty, cow-byre, stable etc. and we took over for £100 the stock, implements, standing crop of oats and the hay crop.  The latter was cut and we only had to stack it. The oats we mowed by hand and found it very stiff work.  In November we purchased a cow which paid well for herself bringing in £1 a week for seven or eight weeks.  We also fed up two pigs.  We did what we could in the way of breaking up the ground with the spade for garden purposes. Altogether we brought about four acres of ground into garden state and planted it with peas (which gave a very good return) cabbages, potatoes etc.'
'We have bought' said Comrade Kapper 'about 2,000 fruit bushes – currants, gooseberries etc. – to replace the old wood that we found on the place when we took it. We are also starting a small orchard.'

Both Newcastle and Sunderland Co-operative Societies supported the project by purchasing produce and sales were generally good but production was problematic.  The large glasshouse blew down twice in the course of construction and a tall chimney collapsed of its own accord because of inept, unskilled construction. Despite the colony’s formally stated principles, women ended up doing “women’s work” whilst many of the men did little work at all.  In truth, most colonists rapidly discovered their view of living the good life on the land didn’t match the reality of long gruelling hours labouring in cold, muddy fields sustained only by idealism and a basic monotonous diet. 

Despite the difficulties Kapper remained upbeat and in October 1897 travelled down to Essex to help fellow anarchist James Evans establish another settlement, as Reynold’s News reported:
'Mr Kapper the founder of the successful Anarchist colony at Clousden Hill Farm, near Newcastle-on-Tyne is a working tailor.  The colony is managed on purely Anarchist principles.  There is no Government Committee, no majority rule, all business being settled by unanimous agreement and in a public meeting of colonists. The question of wages has also received a solution, every member of the community taking sufficient for his needs from the wealth accumulated by the labour of all.'

To one disillusioned ex-colonist, Kapper’s encomium was a red rag to a bull as Reynold’s News observed: 'With reference to the Kapper Anarchist Colony at Clousden Hill Farm, Forest Hall near Newcastle, Charles Richardson, an ex-colonist, 54, Hall Street, South Shields, denies that the colony is a success. It is, he says, in debt and members are leaving for the towns to seek work. He also alleges that the majority of the members are not Anarchists, one member frequently blocking all business.'

The colony struggled on but the cat was out of the bag and confidence both externally and internally collapsed. Ideological fault lines widened into unbridgeable divisions and within a year all pretence of Anarchist-Communism was abandoned.  The colony broke up leaving just two non-anarchist gardeners, Rudolph Wunderlich and Hans Rasmussen to run the smallholding on strictly commercial lines until their business was declared bankrupt in 1902.

Of the six anarchist colonists only Sedlak wanted to continue the experiment.  He walked from Newcastle to join an Essex colony but on discovering that too had disintegrated, continued on to the Cotswolds.  There he joined the Whiteway colony where he formed a “free-union” with anarchist author, Nellie Shaw, with whom he lived happily ever after until his death in 1935.

Kapper, in the worst anarchist tradition, neglected to evaluate the results of this unique libertarian experiment, reinforcing the opinion of critics who consider the failure of Clousden as the inevitable result of naive politics.  After the collapse Francis resumed full-time ladies’ tailoring, moved to Southampton, embraced bourgeois values and in 1910 married tailoress Ethel May Slawson.  Ethel Kapper operated her own business, “RITA – COSTUMIER & MILLINER” from Commercial Road, Southampton whilst Francis ran a separate tailoring business from home at 8 Cranbury Place. Kapper was only once reminded of Newcastle, when he supplied clothes to Charles Gulliver, an actor appearing in pantomime there.  After Gulliver failed to pay his bill, Kapper had no hesitation in suing him for the money. 

Francis Sedlak 'attributed the failure of the Communistic colony to the fact that theorists who promoted it looked only to the good qualities of mankind, forgetting the ill – Egotism is inherent in this – he said, and it is idle to pretend not to be conscious of it.'
Frank Starr largely agreed with this conclusion:
'The cause of its non-success was our poor human nature.  All wanted to lead and none would follow…many had shirked the work, or had only done it when and how they pleased…  None were there with a view to making money and if a few were the poorer for it they had gained experience and health, which as Emerson says is the first wealth…In conclusion, he said he had enough of Communism.  We were a bit too previous.  In another existence – say 5,000 years hence – a Communistic settlement might have a chance.'

In 1901 Whiteway also abandoned anarchist-communism as unworkable but unlike Clousden it didn’t disintegrate but instead embraced a more practical mutualist, Proudhonian model. Regretably, most anarchists ignored these practical demonstrations of Kropotkin’s over-optimism but we don’t know what Kapper concluded for he lost interest in anarchism; dying, aged 72 in 1930 in Southampton, a respected businessman.

For Peace, Love & Anarchism
Christopher Draper