J.K. ROWLING & tyranny of historical processes

ON the 10th, June 2020, J.K. Rowling Wrote about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues:

'But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces.'

She added: 'The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people. All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.'

Evolution of Fashionable Addiction in the Cultural Realm

When I read the above address from a children's author of which I must admit to having only read the occasional oddments in newspapers, and I haven't even seen any of the associated films related to her work; I was drawn back to George Orwell's essay 'Inside the Whale' written in 1940. Orwell was then aware and worried about the poor state of English literature and he wrote of the period: 'Symptomatically, that is more significant than the mere fact that five thousand novels are published in England every year and four thousand nine hundred of them are tripe.'

Back in 1940, Orwell was clearly as pessimistic, as J.K. Rowling seems to be today, and he felt the writer was living in 'an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction'. He believed that: 'As for the writer, he [sic] is sitting on a melting iceberg: he is merely an anachronism, a hangover from a bourgeois age...'

A few years earlier in 1936 Orwell clarified the problem while reviewing 'The Novel Today' by the Marxist critic Philip Henderson, when he wrote that the official 'art for art's sake' school was finished and it was then being replaced by two gangs of extremists: 'Both the Catholic and Communist usually believe, though unfortunately they do not often say, that abstract aesthetic standards are bunkum and that a book is only a "good" book it it preaches the right sermon. To the Communist, good literature means "proletarian" literature. (Mr Henderson is careful to explain, however that this doesn't mean literature written by proletarians; which is just as well, because there isn't any.)'

Sermons and the Winter of Anarchistic Free Thinking

In that bleak world of 1940 with the bombs falling, the year in which I was born, Orwell pinned his hopes on Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' and a novel 'With No sermons, merely subjective truth'

Orwell during the war regarded Henry Miller then as the best bet in the circumstances: 'a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceper of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses.' Not very edifying but once read never forgotten; J.K. Rowling is clearly a much more fragrant specimen and one more easy to get behind in the battle against the current cancel culture fanatics. For freedom of expression is under attack now just as much as it was in the 1930s when the Marxists held the sway; today it is now the obsessive identity politicians cracking the whip, and as a consequence writing and literature is suffering under the current historical process.

Nowadays though, it's not just the general message which is under threat from the 'cancel culture' clans, but anyone can pulled-up for some throwaway remark: a recent example is J.K.Rowling for mentioning 'Never trust a man in a dress' in her book 'Troubled Blood[' a 900-page novel that is said to be Dickensian in its scope.

Nick Cohen in The Spectator [15/09/20] reviewed Ms. Rowling's sin thus: 'Troubled Blood is a 900-page novel that is Dickensian in its scope and gallery of characters. Strike and his business partner Robin Ellacott are hired by a middle-aged woman to investigate the disappearance of her mother in the 1970s. Detectives at the time thought Creed had killed her, but no one knew the truth and the woman’s body had never been found. Strike and Ellacott investigate Creed, but then they investigate a good dozen others. You have to search hard to find a justification for the belief that the book’s moral 'seems' to be "never trust a man in a dress". But then relentless searches for the tiniest evidence of guilt are the marks of heresy hunters.'

The trouble is that this kind of censorship is that it is not just the preserve of the usual suspects among the political authoritarians on the left and the right. Curiously, the socalled libertarians at the 'anarchist' Freedom Press have been vigously rooting out dissidents who have supported people like Helen Steel and J.K.Rowling. Dave Douglass, an anarcho-syndicalist, and in August 2019 a member of the Friends of Freedom Press, was told by the secretary of the group Steve Sorba that he had 'had embarrassed his fellow Director colleagues by favouring a booklet which questions some of the stranger aspects of gender politics'. Dave was then encouraged to spare his colleagues blushes as directors of Freedom Press and to step down.

The Freedom Press directors have had a troubled history since it was found that Secretary Sorba had been been running the show without reference to his fellow directors, and even placing the names directors on the Company's House register without their knowledge. Since that was discovered and exposed on the NV Blog, Secretary Sorba is believed to have cleaned-up his act.

The Seed within el Culo de un Burro

There was a time more than two decades ago when the anarchist newspaper Freedom had a good reputation for being courageous, controversal and a kind of political Daniel in the lion's den, but that seems no longer to be the case. Its current publishers seem shy and quite willing to censor folk, and to court any fashionable fad no matter how despicable.

When a few years ago two distinguished academics and historians, David Goodway and Peter Marshall, gained entry as directors of Friends of Freedom Press it was thought that things may improve. Alas, it has not really happened. Not only was Dave Douglass effectively shown the door by Secretary Soba, but the rest of the directors have not covered themselves with glory and their committee seems to continually side with censorship and the prescriptions of the cancel culture.

In 2005, David Goodway wrote 'Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow - left libertarian thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward' which tried to show that anarchistic forms and projects can be discovered within the structures of everyday life if we seek them and that these 'seeds beneath the snow' should be thrown into relief and promoted by anarchists. It is a seductive theory and can easily be shown to have some credibility substance by focusing upon the ordinary and everyday activities of 'people's methods' which Orwell himself had long ago advocated as a form of common place sociology. In 1967, Harold Garfinkel had even introduced what he came to 'ethnomethodology' [people's methods], which became a form of response to the then conventional sociology of Talcott Parsons with social action theory and structural functionalism.

Colin Ward had long ago criticised British anarchists for being too obsessed with history when he thought they would do better by focussing on a more sociological approach. The work of Colin Ward is very popular in Italy, and the original author of the novel 'The Seed Beneath the Snow'* Ignazio Silone is Italian. But Goodway and Peter Marshall are themselves both English historians, and both are historians presenting artful historical naratives. Now Silone was one of those writers who Orwell in 1944 said belonged to the school of foreign writers who are 'what one might call concentration-camp literature' in that they had seen and understood totalitarianism from the inside. In his book Silone has the seed hidden from the police by the peasants, not beneath the snow, but up the culo of a donkey. It is perhaps a more approprate place since neither of the two historians on the Friends of Freedom Press directorate have covered themselves with glory.

* The Seed Beneath the Snow, the final novel in The Abruzzo Trilogy, follows the fugitive Pietro Spina as he refuses to accept the conditions of pardon for his transgressions against the fascist state and flees to the mountains. As in Fontamara and Bread and Wine, Silone achieves a rich harmony of allegory and realism in his portrayal of the cafoni of Abruzzo and their struggle for freedom. An extraordinary, unburnished vision of the conflict between good and evil, communicating to its reader, in the words of F. W. Dupee, “Silone’s deep integrity, his sufferings and aspirations, his radical sense of the world’s wrongs.” ****************************************************************

Democracy & the anarchists

by Brian Bamford

REVIEWING a recent interview involving the academic Ruth Kinna, the critic Les May asks on this blog about the way she tackles the question about the attitudes of English anarchists to democracy. Here Les May suggests that she hesitated and appeared to stumble when the interviewer asked her whether anarchists believed in democracy.   Mr. May puts this down to the abysmal way in which some modern anarchists have handled themselves when confronted with political, moral and intellectual differences.  He probably has in mind people being roughed-up, shoved around and sent packing at anarchist  book fairs and other events.  The list is long but the recent exclusions of Helen Steel has excited interest, and not just on Mums Net.  This raised another issue: the crude hierarchical nature of the anarchist's methodology in so far as some of them seem more than willing to defend minor celebrities like Ms. Steel but hold back from backing 'lesser' figures who fall foul on some political point of order.

At the Liverpool Anarchist Book fair last year, where a blacklist was in operation and tolerated, even by Milan Rai, the editor of Peace News failed to give his full backing to people who were blacklisted there.  Mr. Rai who accepts that the practice of a blacklist was unfair in Liverpool, non-the-less he didn't let it get in the way or prevent him from doing his own book promotion at the same event.  Political expediency seems to be name of the game among the political libertarians of all shapes and sizes.  Moral compass, it seems, takes a back seat.at all levels among the English, particularly when it gets in the way of business.  The New from Nowhere set who were organising the Liverpool Bookfair, were more worried about losing business through the bad publicity that ensued than upholding any moral standards.

Les May writes:  'Democracy isn’t just about voting, it’s also about how we treat people we disagree with.'

What is democracy, we might ask?

The book 'School for Dictators' by the Italian novelist Ignazio Silone, has a character called Thomas: the Cynic who declares:  'Democracy is universal sufferage plus certain conditions.  The Greeks who were the first to experience it, [and] described four of them as follows: isonomia, or equality of rights before the law; liberty (which is a word plain enough in itself); isocratia or political equality; and isegoria, or freedom of speech.'

Mr. May asks:  'Why is it that people who claim to follow a political philosophy which extols personal freedom, trust in the individual, working for the collective good and personal responsibility, so often turn out to be authoritarian when they band together in groups?'

What maybe puzzling Mr. May, who has been around the English anarchists at least since the Freedom Anarchist Ball in the early 1960s, is that some anarchists today are actively repressing others and trying to prevent them presenting alternative viewpoints.  


But it is not only Milan Rai at Peace News who has fallen short and failed to be consistent in his stand against the persistent censorship, bullying and gagging among the adherents of anarchism in this country.  Pensioned-off academics like David Goodway and Peter Marshall who wrote 'Demanding the Impossible:  A History of Anarchism', both sit on a committee 'Friends of Freedom Press' which oversees a blacklist which named several northern anarchists.  This blacklist was compiled by a Freedom incomer from East Anglia Simon Saunders who also works as a hack for the Morning Star.

As Les May writes in his article:   'There’s no shortage of examples of such authoritarian behaviour which have been recorded on the Northern Voices blog, some in recent weeks.   Why do they do it?'

We live in troubling times in which politics on all fronts in this country has now been generally discredited by a degree of intolerance.  It is surprising that in some respects it is at its worst among the anarchists and among the readers at book fairs.  

*******

'Fuck May 1968'.& Anthropological Illiteracy

by Brian Bamford
THE distinguished historian A.J.P. Taylor once wrote that he was a vain rather than ambitious historian. Radical historians, one would have thought would be vain rather than ambitious, yet my dealings with the radical historians recently suggests that they are both vain and ambitious. My review below reflects upon how the new wave radical historians may have become corrupted in their own studies to a degree in which they are now becoming part of the problem:

******

ACADEMIC righteousness prevails most among those of us to whom the truth is revealed.  So many PhD's doing papers on this and that, so many historians in receipt of grants and bursaries. Vernon Richards, the former editor of Freedom - 'the anarchist weekly', once called for exporting the PhD's.

Ian Gwinn, who was organising the event Liverpool on the 8th, June which was rather coyly entitled 'F*ck May 1968, Fight Now: Exploring the Uses of the Past from 1968 to Today', welcomed participants at the CASA Club. The first session was 'History is a Weapon' addressed by Christopher Garland on 'Circumnavigating the past, foreclosing the future: commemoration of the radical past in the amnesiac present'. The title of the event, I learnt, was based on a bit of graffiti from Athens in 2008.

In his book 'DEMANDING THE IMPOSSIBLE: A history of Anarchism', Peter Marshall talked of graffiti on the walls of Paris in 1968 declaring: 'NEITHER GODS NOR MASTERS; THE MORE YOU CONSUME THE LESS YOU LIVE; ALL POWER TO THE IMAGINATION; IT IS FORBIDDEN TO FORBID; BE REALISTIC DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE.'

Marshall claimed that unlike other French revolutions, which had been mainly concerned with overcoming economic scarcity, 'the French revolutionaries in a society of abundance [in 1968] were preoccupied with the transformation of everyday life.'

As General De Gaulle correctly noted, they were 'in revolt against modern society, against consumer society, against technological society, whether communist in the East or capitalist in the West'.

The then editor of The Times, William Rees Mogg, came to the same conclusions in his editorials at that time, and had supported the Rolling Stones, who according to Keith Richards, would have been destroyed at the height of their notoriety more than 40 years ago if The Times under William Rees Mogg had not not launched its famous attack on their jail sentences for drugs offences.'

The program for the Liverpool event quotes Walter Benjamin’s maxim that ‘nothing that has ever happened can be regarded as lost for history...’.  With in Spain the ‘Memoria Historico’ movement drawing on evidence from the Spanish Civil War that the families of victims of that war are still trying to recover.

Eric Azera from Barcelona talked about the recent threats to squatting in Catalonia and elsewhere. Tim Briedis addressed the 1994 National University occupations in Australia, and student radicalism which had developed beyond the 1960s.

Piotr Paszynski and Joaquin Armanet spoke on Jacques Ranciere’s concept of ‘Radical History and Proletarian Experience’. Jacques Ranciere was a student of the Marxist thinker Althusser, but clashed with his teacher over the events of May ’68. While Althusser and other Marxists were asserting the importance of Marxist academia in the French student revolts, Ranciere began to break away from this traditional mode of thought. Marxist intellectuals accused the revolts of being bourgeois and undisciplined. To which Ranciere accused Marxists of being a bunch of little shits.

From a criticism of Althusser and orthodox Marxism, Ranciere’s message soon became ‘Philosophy – it’s a big bag of dicks.’ Writing Hatred of Democracy, Ranciere attacks the Platonic tradition and ties it to practically every Marxist philosopher. He argues that everyone in the Western tradition, from Plato to Marx, wants to become a philosopher king to shovel Truth into the mouths of the blind ignorant masses. Ranciere carries this line of thought to his other books such as “Disagreement” where he accuses every theorists of democracy of being a Platonic saboteur.

Hannah Arendt in an essay entitled ‘Communicative Power’ wrote: ‘We have recently witnessed how it did not take more than a the relatively harmless, essentially nonviolent French students’ rebellion to reveal the vulnerability of the whole political system, which rapidly disintegrated before the astonished eyes of the young rebels…. they intended only only to challenge the ossified university system of government power, together with that of the huge party bureaucracies - ‘une sorte de desintergration de toutes les hierarchies”. It was a text-book case of a revolutionary situation.’

Roger Ball of the Bristol Radical History Group seems to be always trying to turn history into agitprop, and capture the headlines. His latest offering is based on an old theme: Unseating the local influence of the Society of Merchant Venturers and pointing to their trade in slavery: ‘Kick over the statues: using history as a weapon’. More recently their efforts have led to a ‘Countering Colston campaign’ in Bristol, which in turn has inevitably resulted in a doctoral paper ‘IS IT WRONG TO TOPPLE STATUES & RENAME SCHOOLS?’ by - Dr. Joanna Burch-Brown* Perhaps radical history has now itself become an industry from which various academic hangers-on are now profiting: even my friend Roger Ball a pioneer of radical history has now been anointed Dr. Roger Ball, and is currently employed as a Research Fellow at Sussex University.

Kerrie McGiveron discussed the part played by the New Left and the rise of Big Flame in the early 1970s, with particular reference to the Kirby Rent Strike (1972-73). She gave an ethographic account of the Rent Strike with the help of a film documentary produced by Nicholas Broomfield. At one point in the film a woman interviewee between puffs on her cigarette in the setting of what appeared to be her front-room, said:

‘

You can take your film, but the position of the working class won’t change’

To which the interviewer responded: ‘Why do you think I’m making this?’

She then said: ‘Just for your personal satisfaction!’

Ms. McGiveron, when questioned about this exchange in which it was suggested that the woman was displaying ‘apathy’ and a claim to ‘privacy’, claimed to have background information in which it was suggested that the interviewee was a member of a far-left party and was in fact very active. Ms. McGiveron had already made clear she was conscious of the dangers of post-facto rationalisation in doing this research. So can we take this special claim to background knowledge seriously?

Terry Wragg of Leeds Animation Workshop showed an animated film which was designed to portrayed male sexism. What began with building site banter, randy pestering and innuendo, concluding with more full-on approaches of the #Me Too variety. What was important here about the animated film was that a picture of reality is much more powerful than saying something; that’s why a docu-drama film like ‘Three Girls’ about the grooming scandal in Rochdale was so effective. But while one can do a feminist-take on predatory men in a social context, it would be just as anthropologically appropriate to do an animated film on ‘Pancake Tuesday’ and the initiation ceremonies, the ritual ‘de-bagging's’ and ‘ball greasing’ of apprentices, that were indulged in widely in the factories and mills in the North of England by both working-men and women in the last two

centuries. But when we talk about radical history in this context we are really, I suspect, joining the bandwagon of the fashionable addicts and the politically correct crowd.

The case of Geoff Brown who took part in the Round-table discussion ‘Remembering 1968 & After’ is significant in this respect. Geoff claims he is ‘active as a historian of Manchester “from below” ’, a softly-spoken Southerner and someone who moved up North in 1972. The jury must still be out over his claim to be a historian ‘working from below’. His publication record as presented in the program for the Liverpool event is rather sparse, he has written something for International Socialism entitled ‘John Tocher and the limits of commitment’ for the North West History Journal (2017/2018); ‘Il Principe, a handbook for career-makers in further education’ and ‘Pakistan, failing state or neoliberalism in crisis’ in International Socialism.

What we are getting here in the sphere of the fad for radical history is something like what Proust showed us in Sodome et Gomorrhe, and what Wyndham Lewis described in ‘The Art of Being Ruled’ as ‘an analysis of the powerful instinctive freemasonery of the pederast’. Dr. Ball wants us to kick over the statues to cleanse the architecture of Bristol and beyond of former historical adventurers, Penguin Random House want to diversify to the nth degree to take care of talented minorities such as the trans community this year, and, who knows, perhaps the necrophiliacs next year.

* Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Bristol.

Free Speech and Cheap Bigots

 by Christopher Draper

ANARCHIST beat-poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti warned us that, “Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality” and last week (5.3.2018) a gang of masked, black-clad thugs calling themselves London Antifa smashed their way into a meeting at Kings College London in a coordinated, violent, attack on “Free Speech”.  

With perverse irony, “FREEDOM” an erstwhile anarchist website celebrated this exhibition of “fascist mentality”; “Well done to London Antifa for taking action against one of (sic) major universities assisting an alt-right speaker in spreading hateful propaganda.”

The New Authoritarians

Fascist-minded “No-Platformers” claim a unilateral ability and right to distinguish “Free speech from Hate-speech” but there is no distinction to be made. 

As George Orwell said, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear” - regardless of how hate-filled the speaker may be. Noam Chomsky advises, “If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all.”

“Hate Speech” is the modern equivalent of “Blasphemy”.  In 1697 Thomas Aikenhead was the last man in Britain executed for Blasphemy.  In the 19^th century the editor, printer and publisher of The Freethinker were all imprisoned for Blasphemy and as late as 1977, according to the trial judge, “It was touch and go” whether Dennis Lemon, the editor of Gay News, would be imprisoned for Blasphemy (he was fined £1000 and given a suspended prison sentence). 

 

When the British State finally abolished the crime of Blasphemy in 2008 “direct-action” bigots eagerly adopted the abandoned role of punishing those deemed to “speak the unspeakable”.  All around us Commissars now claim the right to control what is expressed even in university halls and anarchist bookfairs.  Where the State formerly identified accusers and offered the prosecuted an opportunity of “due process” and an argued defence the new authoritarians operate in the dark, anonymous, masked and unreasoned. These new arbiters of the new Blasphemy don’t debate they assert and attack.

Free Speech - the Bedrock of Liberty

Northern Voices considers dissent inevitable, healthy and to be welcomed. We are happy to debate FREE SPEECH with anyone in any public forum but the authoritarians don’t respect reason.  Bans, censorship, blacklisting and physical attacks are their modus operandi.  Indulging in such antics lost the organisers of the Manchester Anarchist Bookfair their former booking at the “Peoples’ History Museum” and seems likely to lose their current venue, “The Partisan”, the financial support of local trade unions. 

 

Violent suppression of Free Speech caused the organisers of the 2017 London Anarchist Bookfair to abandon plans for a 2018 event.  The vandals have kicked open the gates and are rampaging amongst us.  Whilst FREEDOM applauds Antifa attacks on Free Speech and publishes books like “BEATING THE FASCISTS” its Board of Management (David Goodway, Peter Marshall, Ernest Rodker et al) timorously cower behind the barricades.  It’s time for all decent minded folk to come out of the closet and stand up for FREE SPEECH.

******

CLOWNS FALL OUT –

BIG TOP TO BE SOLD?

(“FREEDOM’s” posthumous annual report 2 – July 2017) 

by Christopher Draper

REGULAR readers will recall how FREEDOM – one of the world’s longest running radical newspapers was destroyed by authoritarian “class warriors” who refuse to vacate its valuable (£1.5m) London premises.  FREEDOM’s Board (FFP) is obliged to resume publication of the newspaper but for two years made negligible efforts to regain the building or restore FREEDOM and effectively colludes with clowns claiming rents from fellow occupants of their self-proclaimed “anarcho-hangout”.  This situation provides nothing for anarchists around the country and achieves even less in spreading anarchist ideas.  On the contrary this whole embarrassing episode is a text-book example of anarchist ineptitude.  NORTHERN VOICES will not collude with this nonsense and we’re happy to expose the absurdist antics of the clown “collective”.

Andy Exits the Circus

Two of the funniest clowns Simon Saunders (“Computer Game-boy”) and Andy Meinke (“Beer-belly”) are jealous performers.  Last year they laughably named and blacklisted four of our NV team for publishing critical reviews.  Simon issued a fatwah – the Northern Voices 4: “should not be given any support by anarchist or progressive organisations…they should not be welcome in anarchist spaces nor published in anarchist outlets – they are persona non grata…”   Now Saunders has banned his fellow clown!  Apparently Andy over-indulged in the beer tent, made off-colour remarks about female artistes and on 7th June 2017 was sacked by the clown collective.  Simple Simon is now ringmaster but the Big Top’s tatty, the audience has drifted away and new management is itching for change.

Last Laugh?

Just a year ago Andy taunted audiences mourning the loss of FREEDOM with his arrogant boast, “Kropotkin might have started it but we fucking finished it”.
You might recall, Simon first entered the Big Top selling Syndicalist programmes whilst simultaneously proclaiming ignorance of anarchist politics – now he claims infallibility.  What a funny old circus!  There’s no performance and the Big Top leaks like a sieve.  Can a pair of plucky new governors save the day?

  Vero Richard’s Dying Circus

Decades ago, when wily old ringmaster Vero Richards re-founded the FREEDOM tradition he was smart enough to create a board of management (FFP) to guarantee the set-up after his death but before he was in his grave miscreants moved in, drove away audiences and threatened outsiders. When aged ex-performer Brian Bamford turned up at last year’s FFP AGM he was knocked to the ground by clowns Andy and Simon, whilst FFP Company Secretary Sorba deleted the digital evidence from the victim’s camera.  What a performance!

New Friends of FREEDOM

Now the show’s over, the clowns have had their day and the audience want their money back. Fortunately, since last year’s AGM management has been refreshed. There are now nine FFP members and the majority are not amused.  FFP now comprises the following nine members;
Stephen Charles Sorba – director of a printworks
Carolyn Jane Wilson - cycle trainer
Jason Holdway - unemployed (rarely attends FFP meetings)
Martin Howard - compiled quizzes for “Black Flag”
David Goodway - libertarian writer and historian
Ernest Rodker - veteran peace campaigner
Jayne Clementson - long-time stalwart of “old” FREEDOM
David John Douglass - libertarian communist ex-coal miner
Peter Marshall - anarchist author of “Demanding the Impossible”

Past Failures

Until now the FFP Board failed every bit as badly as the “collective” to act as anarchists, both preferring to operate as secretive cabals, accountable to nobody.  Neither “collective” nor FFP publishes minutes or identifies its members.  Fortunately, our contacts abound and NV is proud to Wikileak details of what’s been going on.  Now it’s time for radical change.
Whilst the first four people on our FFP list - Sorba, Wilson, Holdway, Howard seem determined not to re-establish the open-minded anarchism that long characterised FREEDOM the last five named are more solid FRIENDS OF FREEDOM.  Significantly the sectarian four all exist in the London bubble (with at least 3, Sorba, Wilson and Holdway concentrated in the South East corner of that bubble), whilst Goodway travels to meetings from Keighley, Marshall journeys from Plymouth and Douglass from South Shields.
Northern Voices has always criticised FFP’s London bias only to be dismissed by ringmaster Saunders for speaking “from the other side of Britain”!
FREEDOM newspaper was formerly the forum for anarchists across Britain, now the Aldgate “anarcho-hangout” is no more than clubrooms for metropolitans.  Anarchists are supposed to reject structures that dis-empower yet the collective are content to exploit their privileged position as Londoners.  Merely to travel to the FREEDOM building is an expensive disincentive for many anarchists around the country yet neither the “collective” nor FFP rotates its meetings around England or even offers a fare-pool so for the recent AGM NV put its money where our mouth is and chipped in £40 to enable one of the northern FFP members to attend.

Anarchism Begins at Home

From their next meeting in October 2017, FFP need to start acting as anarchists and tackle this issue.   Either move your meetings around the country or share the costs.  It is written into FFP’s formal constitution (para. 32) that members attending should have their expenses paid but this has just been ignored by Company Secretary Sorba and guess where he lives.
Next, FFP must put the old FREEDOM building up for sale.  It was bought to provide premises to layout and print the paper but this is no longer required to publish either an electronic or print edition. A sale would raise £1.5m to £2.0m which could finance a publications fund split between maintaining a new high quality FREEDOM anarchist news site and a separate book-publishing programme of say two titles per year.  This could be overseen by a publications sub-committee of FFP.  A website editor could be appointed by this group and granted, say, a renewable, modest biannual stipend.
The existing fixed metropolitan asset must be liquidated to discontinue further privileging a London elite and refocus on the needs of the widely scattered, isolated anarchist community.  When the clowns trashed FREEDOM and cast aside the loyalty of former subscribers, only FFP member and FREEDOM stalwart Jayne Clementson expressed any sensitivity or understanding of the harm they caused to the anarchist movement.

Time for a Change

Since FREEDOM was shut down Northern Voices has ceaselessly campaigned for a revival.  We’re heartened by the exit of Meinke and appointment of Dave Douglass and Peter Marshall and encouraged by the response of someone close to the collective, “I have no doubt your group’s commendable efforts precipitated this”, but fine words butter no parsnips.  We call on Dave Douglass and Peter Marshall to put some iron into the soul of other well-intentioned but irresolute FRIENDS.  FREEDOM, like the Norwegian Blue, might appear deceased but now, in July 2017, the FRIENDS have the individuals, the ideas and the resources to get FREEDOM squawking again. They owe it to anarchists around the country not to let a few London clowns reduce our whole political philosophy and movement to chucking custard pies.

Christopher Draper – for Northern Voices (July 2017)

Freedom's Metropolitan Bubble Bursts!

Anarchist Publishing House Broadens its Base
by Brian Bamford

LAST Monday at this year's Annual General Meeting, the Friends of Freedom Press have appointed two new directors from outside London.  In doing so, with the appointment of the former miner and trade unionist, David Douglass from Tyneside, and the writer, Peter Marshall from Plymouth, they have effectively broken the stranglehold of a metropolitan political clan which has continually served to castrate the publication of Freedom as a serious intellectual voice of radical anarchism.

News over the weekend came out that the Freedom Bookshop manager, Andy Meinke, is leaving his job, but it is still unclear as to whether he is leaving of his own accord or if he has been dismissed by the unofficial Freedom Collective, over which he had a degree of influence.  A year ago Mr. Meinke was questioned by the Metropolitan Police after an incident in the Freedom Press Bookshop in which he played a role trying to prevent someone from participating in last year's Friends of Freedom Press' AGM.

The story of the strange departure of Mr. Meinke came to Northern Voices on the evening of the 16th, June, when we got the following e-mail from someone unknown to us in London:
'Thought you would like to know I was listening to Dissident Island Radio earlier this evening. Andy Meinke, has a regular five minute slot on the two-hour show.  He said at the end of his usual schtick that he was leaving Freedom and there would be a farewell drink in the shop at 2pm this Sunday' 
Almost a week later this same source informed us:
'The edition of Dissident Island Radio I referred to last week is online.  The final section of Andy's slot where he mentions leaving has been removed and one of the shows sweary radio idents has been inserted to camouflage the edit.  Heaven knows what he's up to.'
Later, our informant further updated us:
'The situation has spilled over on to Facebook with Meinke and others, including that anarchist can't recall his name who works for the Morning Star (editor: this is presumably Simon Saunders, formally from Ipswich). Facebook is a no-go zone for me so I haven't followed it'
Our informant ends up with a warning by saying:
'I have no doubt your group's commendable actions precipitated this.  The only questions remaining are what carnage will be discovered in his wake, and if the place (Freedom Press Bookshop) doesn't collapse, who will replace him.'
Another metropolitan pundit writes today in response to the news of Mr. Meinke's departure:
'Good news for Freedom.  Maybe not so good for wherever he ends up next.' 
Ultimately. the Friends of Freedom Press (FFP) themselves, particularly the FFP Secretary Steven Charles Sorba appointed as secretary of FFP in 2002, should be asking themselves how they came to allow someone like Andy Meinke to be employed for so long, empowered as a virtual overlord to very dubious goings on, without the directors applying any obvious restraints. It may be just a coincidence but the decline of Freedom newspaper seems to date from 2002, when Harold Schulthorpe, then living in Hebden Bridge, resigned as secretary of FFP, and Steve Sorba took over.
Those readers interested in the details could do worse than read Chris Draper's accounts of the history of Freedom:
 northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2015/.../who-killed-freedom-unauthorised-history.html 
northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/.../who-killed-freedom-unauthorised-version.html
northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/.../who-killed-freedom-unauthorised-history_6.html
 northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/.../who-killed-freedom-unauthorised-history_7.html

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)