Jigsaw II by Louis Macneice

IN April 2004, someone had posted a request on a blog asking

for poems on the Influences of Technology.  I already knew 

about the Louis Macneice Jigsaw II from A level in the 1960.

It strikes me that this is relevant to our time now with Greta  

 Thunberg addressing the UK today.  People are so easily dazzled

by technology.   In the 19th century, John Ruskin and William 
Morris wanted us to bring nature into our homes.  
And yet, people today prefer to inflict technology upon themselves. 

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Posted by: Johnny (---.nasd.k12.pa.us)

Date: April 22, 2004  Hi,
I'm looking for poems reflecting on the influences of technology on culture.
 *****************
How about Jigsaw II by Louis Macneice?

Property! Property! Let us extend
Soul and body without end:
A box to live in, with airs and graces,
A box on wheels that shows its paces,
A box that talks or that makes faces,
And curtains and fences as good as the neighbours'
To keep out the neighbours and keep us immured
Enjoying the cold canned fruit of our labours
In a sterilised cell, unshaved, insured.

Property! Property! When will it end
When will the poltergeist ascend
Out of the sewer with chopper and squib
To burn the mink and the baby's bib
And cut the tattling wire to town
And smash all the plastics, clowning and clouting
And stop all the boxes shouting and pouting
And wreck the house from the aerial down
And give these ingrown souls an outing?

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John Ruskin Matters Exhibition

  'Joy For Ever' 
by Brian Bamford

YESTERDAY, I visited an exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester:   'This exhibition responds to the 200th birthday of artist, art critic and social reformer John Ruskin with a joyful look at how to use art for social change.'

Part of this exhibition draws on the work of Goya and Hogarth to illustrate a point about their work as 'outsiders to critique and reflect on dysfunctional European society of their time:  'the nationalism, warfare, poverty, homelessness, abuse, corruption,,, all subjects that come under their forensic scrutiny.'

This work is labelled according to the descriptive note 'as conceived as Britain propels towards exit from the European Union' and, it says, that 'this  timely exhibition activates the work of Goya and Hogarth to raise questions of a tortured mind-set of Britain on the eve of Brexit'.

One of the engravings by Hogarth shows his satirical critique of the South Sea Bubble.  This is relevant because the subtitle to the exhibition is 'How to use art to change the World and its Price in the Market'.  

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Ruskin’s and Turner’s influence on later artists

Refuge:  The Art of Belonging (15 February-29 June 2019, at Abbot Hall Gallery) 

 

IN showing Ruskin’s and Turner’s influence today among contemporary artists, the

exhibition will also display a series of large monochrome drawings by Emma Stibbon.

In June 2018, Royal Academician Stibbon retraced the steps of Turner and Ruskin

visiting the Alps.  She took the route made by Ruskin in June 1854 when he produced

a series of daguerreotypes (early photographs) of Alpine scenery, to see what remains

of the glaciers today.  Her work shows how geography has been impacted by climate

change over the last two centuries. Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud will also be

shown at York Art Gallery from March 29 to June 23 2019.

The exhibition book, bringing together a collection of new essays by artists, climate

change scientists, art historians and curators, will be published in March 2019.  More

Lakeland Arts’ exhibitions during 2019: 
 

Refuge, The Art of Belonging (15 February-29 June 2019, Abbot Hall) tells the story

of artists who entered Britain as a result of Nazi occupation alongside a community

project exploring the lives of refugees living in Cumbria. The exhibition examines

displacement within artists’ work and the adoption of new landscapes.

The show features works from Lakeland Arts’ Collection including Hilde Goldschmidt,

Hans Coper, Lucie Rie, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach and Kurt Schwitters. Schwitters

(1887-1948) the first multi-media artist, settled in Ambleside, Cumbria, after coming

to Britain as a refugee. Anne, Countess of Pembroke (Lady Anne Clifford) (22 March-

22 June 2019, Abbot Hall) sees an unsung campaigner return home.

Abbot Hall takes part in the National Portrait Gallery’s Coming Home project which is

loaning portraits of iconic individuals to places across the country that they are most

closely associated with. This means Abbot Hall is able to show off the finest portrait

of Lady Anne Clifford, which is in the National Portrait Gallery’s collection. Lady Anne

Clifford (1590-1676) spent much of her life in a long and complex legal battle to obtain

the rights of her inheritance.

This portrait of her, by William Larkin, (c1618), is an excellent example of those commissioned by members of the Court of Charles I. Her fascinating fight is known

through her diaries and the magnificent

The Great Picture, painted in 1646 and on permanent show at Abbot Hall. The Lady

Anne Clifford portrait, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery, will be hung alongside

the portrait of her mother, Lady Margaret Russell, Countess of Cumberland, which was

also painted by William Larkin. Anne’s mother was the only person who supported her

campaign.

The arrival of this important portrait sees mother and daughter reunited in Cumbria.

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JOHN RUSKIN in CUMBRIA & Beyond?

Lakeland Arts’ exhibitions for 2019:

Turner, Ruskin, Scottish Colourists, The Art of Belonging and more 

 

'In 1884 Ruskin wrote about an encroaching “Storm Cloud” - 
a darkening of the skies

that he attributed to the belching chimneys of the modern world.'

Lakeland Arts has revealed key highlights from its exciting 2019 programme of exhibitions.

Helen Watson, Lakeland Arts’ Director of Programming, said:  

'Lakeland Arts has a fabulous and fascinating year ahead. We will be showing off great works from our own collections as well as major loans from across the UK.

'We will be exhibiting more than 450 years of art history as well as contemporary work from artists of today.'

Main summer exhibition:

The main summer show at Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, is Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud (12 July – 5 October 2019).

The exhibition will include more than 100 works and stretch across five rooms.  It is one

of the biggest exhibitions in the UK during the 200^th anniversary of John Ruskin’s birth.

Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud will be the first in – depth examination of the relationship between both men, their work, and the impact Ruskin had in highlighting climate

change. In addition to Ruskin’s paintings and writings, the exhibition will feature an

introductory film along with a new publication incorporating fresh research on Ruskin

and Turner’s work.

Abbot Hall is partnering with York Art Gallery and University of York on Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud. Works from both partners go on show alongside substantial loans

from national and regional collections. Ruskin (1819- 1900) was the leading English

art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, water colourist,

prominent social thinker and philanthropist.

JMW Turner (1775-1881) was a landscape painter, traveller, poet and teacher. Many

people consider him the first modern painter. Ruskin said of Turner he was ‘the

greatest of the age’ and was a lifelong supporter.  The exhibition will feature watercolours,

drawings and a haunting portrait of Ruskin from the National Portrait Gallery, made in

the aftermath of his first serious mental illness.

In 1884 Ruskin wrote about an encroaching “Storm Cloud” - a darkening of the skies

that he attributed to the belching chimneys of the modern world.  The imagery also

allowed him to articulate his ongoing mental struggles.   Bringing together Victorian

and contemporary works of art, the exhibition will demonstrate the unsettling messages

underpinning Ruskin’s eye for beauty in the natural world.

Ruskin’s anxiety about darkening skies and polluted storm clouds is contrasted with

his early interest in Turner’s luminous pictures. 

The exhibition contains a substantial display of Turner’s watercolours, demonstrating

his evolving style, and his creation of highly-finished sample studies of British and

alpine landscapes. Lakeland Arts’  The Passage of Mount St Gothard (1804) by

Turner will be a key painting on show.   Cultural organisations in Cumbria including

Ruskin Museum and Brantwood in Coniston will also be marking the anniversary of

Ruskin’s birth with a series of exhibitions and events in 2019, making the county the

place to visit for everything Ruskin related.

The Ruskin Museum holds the most comprehensive display in the Lake District about

the life and work of John Ruskin. Brantwood is Ruskin’s former home where he spent

the last 28 years of his life. Helen Watson said:

“Ruskin, Turner & the Storm Cloud will be one of our biggest shows ever. If you havean interest in Ruskin and Turner this is a must-see exhibition.

“Next year is hugely significant in celebrating Ruskin and we are delighted to have this landmark exhibition at Abbot Hall during the 200^th anniversary of his birth. It’s particularly apt that the exhibition takes place in Cumbria – the home of Ruskin and the place he found most inspiration.”

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Review: 'Slow Burning Fuse' & Anarchist Aspects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brenan has written of the same 1881 Congress:

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

In England, John Quail has demonstrated in his conclusion:

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

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

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

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

In conclusion Quail [page 333] writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheffield Anarchist on Trial

by Christopher Draper

“At the Yorkshire Winter Assize, before Mr Justice Grantham, Robert Sykes Bingham, 40 years of age, provision merchant, a respectably-dressed and intelligent looking man, was indicted for having at Sheffield, on December 22, 1889, encouraged and persuaded divers persons to murder one James M’Loughlin.”

Nobbling the Nobsticks

BINGHAM was an anarchist whilst M’Loughlin, his alleged target, was a 'nobstick', the local term for a blackleg. Sheffield had a tradition of deterring blacklegging by violent direct action, frequently involving the use of explosives. Although 1889 was two decades since the end of the 'Sheffield Outrages' the authorities were determined to prevent a resurgence of militant unionism.

Robert’s Story

Born in 1849, Robert Bingham’s birthplace of Norton was still very rural although just five miles south-east of the smoke blackened centre of Sheffield. Small scale workshops had sprung up in the area, powered by the rivers and streams flowing down from the Peak District and this unique blend of small-scale workshops amidst sublime natural beauty persuaded John Ruskin to back a cooperative scheme enabling skilled craftsmen to continue to work the land.

Established in 1877, Ruskin’s 'St George’s Farm' colony attracted practical socialists. Although living nearby, the youthful Robert Sykes Bingham was initially more impressed by the republican ideas of the radical Liberal MP, Charles Dilkes.  In 1871, Bingham organised Dilkes’ security for a huge public meeting held at Leeds’ Victoria Hall.  When determined royalists tried to disrupt and wreck the meeting, in the words of the Sheffield Independent, 'He called on the Stewards to follow him into the crowd but they did not. He went alone. He was seriously manhandled.'  It was Robert Bingham’s baptism of fire.

No Hammer or Sickle

As a scythemaker, Robert’s dad was exactly the sort of skilled craft worker that Ruskin hoped to attract to his 'Guild of St George' social reform movement but Ruskin’s ideas proved more attractive to Robert and his siblings for both his brother John and sister Louisa, also became anarchists. Although all three shared advanced social ideas none was attracted to either making or wielding scythes, and all three settled for retailing groceries.

Robert was most entrepreneurial and at various times all three worked together at branches of a chain of grocery stores that he owned and managed.  Of course it wasn’t all plain sailing and in 1873 Robert was in trouble with the law and fined £10 and costs for selling adulterated lard. In 1876 he was back in court and forced to hand over another tenner, this time in damages to labourer William Ollerenshaw whom he’d carelessly run over in his horse drawn delivery cart.

In 1881 Robert’s grocery empire was in dire financial straits and he was pursued by creditors. Fortunately he found suitable backers, continued in business and remained a grocer for the rest of his life.

The Grocer and the Carpenter

Edward Carpenter, the pioneering gay libertarian, who lived nearby was a friend of Robert’s.  In 1885, the pair campaigned together for an independent radical candidate, Mervyn Hawkes, who stood for Irish Home Rule, free education and “root and branch land reform”.

The following year the nucleus of this group started the 'Sheffield Socialist Club' with a libertarian manifesto composed by Carpenter but with Robert as one of the original signatories. John and Louisa, by then married to a drunken bully named George Usher, joined soon after. 

Café Society

To promote the cause, Bingham and his comrades persuaded William Morris to visit Sheffield and deliver two lectures in the Secularist Hall, on Sunday 28th February 1886. Morris was pleased with the result though the Sheffield comrades resolved to remain independent and not affiliate to Morris’ 'Socialist League'. In March 1887 club members invited Kropotkin to Sheffield and he lectured, “to a considerable audience, which consisted mainly of the working classes”. 

Initially Robert and his chums met at the Wentworth Café in Holly Street and hired halls for public meetings but with Carpenter’s backing they were able to acquire their own spacious premises, the old debtors’ jail in Scotland Street.  They created a 'Commonwealth Café' on the ground floor and a meeting hall on the floor above.

Carpenter fondly recalled these early SSC years:
'We organized lectures, addresses, pamphlets, with a street-corner propaganda which soon brought us in amusing and exciting incidents in the way of wrangles with the police and the town-crowds… A dozen or twenty at most formed the moving and active element of our society - though its membership may have been a hundred or more; and these disposed themselves to their various functions.  Mrs. Usher, large-bosomed and large-hearted, would move on the outskirts of our open-air meetings, armed with a bundle of literature.  She was an excellent saleswoman and few could resist her hearty appeal "Buy this pamphlet, love, it will do you good!"  Even in the streets or the tramcars the most solemn and substantial old gentlemen fell a prey to her.  Her brothers, the two Binghams, were among our two speakers, and both of them pretty effective, the one in a logical, the other (Robert) in a more oratorical way.  They were provision merchants in the town; and their business suffered at first, but afterwards gained, by the connection.'

Anarchy in the Air

In those halcyon days the Sheffield comrades marched happily together towards common goals but as the decade advanced political paths began to diverge. As late as the summer of 1889 Robert’s own politics were still fluid, as fellow club member, George Hukin frustratedly observed “(Robert) first of all goes in strong on one thing – say the eight hour day – and just when you think the meeting is going to settle about what’s to be done, he suddenly remembers that after all the 8 hours is only a palliative and it’s doubtful whether it’s worth our while to bother about it.” 

Everywhere miltant unionism was advancing, the successful strike action of the London gas-workers was rapidly followed by that of the dockers, lifting the spirit and ambition of the whole working class. In June 1889 it was the turn of the Leeds gas-workers.  When Leeds Council brought in scabs and the military to break the strike, workers fought back attacking both blacklegs and local worthies.

Whilst Carpenter’s closest confidants were chastened by the workers’ militancy, Robert was exhilarated.  All three Binghams, Robert, John and Louisa, along with the majority of club members were moving ever closer to anarchism. As propaganda activities intensified, more strident speakers were invited.  In November 1889 the fiery London anarchist Charles Mowbray came to Sheffield but, as Commonweal reported, William Morris was also invited.

'Comrade Mowbray addressed large meetings on Saturday (16th Nov.) at Penistone Street, West Bar, Gower Street, the Monolith, assisted by Bulas, Bingham, Carpenter and Sketchley.  Mowbray also addressed a meeting at the Hall of Science. At the monolith a police inspector wanted his name and address.  On Sunday evening we had a tea and social meeting, after which Mowbray lectured on “Revolution and Reform”.  On Monday a meeting was held at Gower Street of the workmen at Cammel’s Ironworks and also at the Monolith, Fargate.  No police interruption. At 8pm William Morris lectured to a good audience at the Cambridge Hall.  Commonweal sold out; 7s worth of literature; good collections.'

A Comrade in Need

When Fred Charles, an unemployed anarchist arrived in Sheffield in the autumn of 1889 Robert offered him a clerking job in one of his grocery shops. Charles enthusiastically joined Bingham’s band of militants and submitted this ominously revealing report to December’s Commonweal: 'Things are moving splendidly in this district. In addition to several meetings held during the week we have good meetings on Sunday – at the Monolith in the morning, Gower Street in the afternoon and the Pump, Westbar, at night. This morning a reporter was specially sent down to report our speeches to the Watch Committee of the Corporation and several rumours are about of various impending prosecutions by the police authorities…'

A speech about a local strike recently delivered at the Monolith by Robert received particularly close attention.  Twenty-eight men had downed tools at 'John Brown and Company’s' Sheffield works and the management replaced them with blacklegs.  The strikers responded by resurrecting Sheffield’s traditional treatment of “nobsticks” and the scabs complained to the police of being beaten up.   The reporter Fred Charles mentioned claimed Bingham had incited the strikers’ violence by his incendiary speech.

Confounding the Constabulary

The following February the reporter’s notes were read out in court and there was no disputing their accuracy;
'There is a little strike going on at Brown’s. These men are making a very just fight…The men who prevent them from winning, who are making the fight a difficult and unequal fight are the “scabs”…They are traitors to the cause . Men who did this sort of thing in war…would be taken and shot…it is not murder, it is killing a traitor.'

Unfortunately for the authorities, the reporter fingered the wrong Bingham brother and the charges against John were formally dismissed after witnesses established that John Bingham did not make the claimed speech nor had he ever delivered any public speech at the Monolith! 

The prosecutors were unabashed. It was conceded that, unlike his brother, Robert Sykes Bingham did regularly speak at the Monolith so the authorities simply substituted his name on an identical charge sheet and proceeded with the prosecution.  The judge gave the jury no doubt that it was their duty to convict, 'Mr Justice Grantham in summing up characterised the speech as strong, clear and positive incentive to murder, observing that if it was not so he did not understand the English language.'  The jury defied the judge and declared Robert, 'Not Guilty!'

1891 –the Year of Living Dangerously

Sheffield was fast gaining a reputation for anarchist militancy and Robert Bingham was encouraged rather than quieted by his failed prosecution. On the 15th of November 1890 William Morris, utterly frustrated by the absurd revolutionary posturing of the anarchist-communist faction, abandoned the Socialist League, warning, 'Men absorbed in a movement are apt to surround themselves with a kind of artificial atmosphere which distorts the proportions of things outside, and prevents them from seeing what is really going on' but Robert Bingham and his anarchist comrades were in no mood to listen.

There had long been ideological tension between Sheffield comrades but the final straw arrived just before Morris’s announcement in the form of roving Irish adventurer and insurrectionary anarchist, Doctor John O’Dwyer Creaghe.  Although Creaghe had only landed in London on 15th October, en voyage from the River Plate, he was immediately installed in the Sheffield anarchist group. Creaghe’s name, alongside Robert Bingham, appears on printed handbills advertising a public commemoration of the Chicago Martyrs held at Hallamshire Hall on 11th November 1890.  His impact on Bingham and Sheffield was immediate. 

By the end of January 1891, exhorted by Creaghe, Robert Bingham’s anarchist faction boycotted their old clubrooms, denounced their former socialist comrades and started their own anarchist club at Creaghe’s Westbar premises. They held their fiery propaganda meetings at the Monolith beneath a banner declaring, 'NO GOD, NO MASTER!'. 

Prior to Creaghe’s arrival, Bingham’s brand of miltant anarchism resonated with local trade union direct action tradition and sustained practical comradely cooperation with fellow Sheffield socialists. Robert, along with his brother and sister, was well known and respected in Yorkshire – which explains why he was acquitted by a jury despite being condemned by a judge. Under the incendiary influence of Creaghe all that went up in smoke.  In 1891 Creaghe initiated a series of campaigns that although nominally anarchist demonstrated contempt for the everyday opinions and underlying political consciousness of local workers

Aided by two other anarchist incomers, Auguste Coulon and Cyril Bell, in 1891 Creaghe published eight editions of 'The Sheffield Anarchist' .  A propaganda sheet that makes 'Class War'  appear moderate and sensible.  Where Bingham’s incitement was focussed, purposeful and rooted in local conditions, Creaghe’s propaganda was sweeping, arrogant and ultimately authoritarian.  Unfortunately Bingham and his otherwise sensible comrades were swept along by Creaghe’s sincere but inappropriate, devil-may-care attitude and ineluctably drawn into an illegalist political net.

Within a year Creaghe was drummed out of town by local workers who in August 1891 physically attacked and besieged the Anarchist Club.  The incumbents embarrassingly relied on police protection to save them from a working class mob who had smashed every single window in the building. 

Creaghe returned to Argentina leaving Bingham to lick his wounds and repair relationships with local workers but Fred Charles was not so lucky. Encouraged by Coulon, now proved to have been a police spy and agent provocateur, he’d been drawn into a bomb plot and jailed for ten years.  My own research leads me to conclude that Cyril Bell was also a state agent who curiously also departed for Argentina before the end of 1891. 

Voice in the Wilderness

From 1885 until 1891 the British anarchist movement had developed and grown until hubris caused anarchist-communists like Robert Bingham to promote tactics devised by the State and served up by agents like Coulon and Bell.  After 1891 British workers distrusted anarchists and direct action and backed labourism and electioneering.

Robert’s immediate task was to liberate Fred Charles and his fellow 'conspirators' from jail.  He energetically campaigned in Walsall and other Midland and Northern towns on behalf of the imprisoned anarchists but despite gaining widespread support from the labour movement the authorities were unmoved.  Shamefully, Robert received little support from local Marxists who told the local paper:  'In our judgement the Walsall prisoners had been properly convicted and we the Sheffield branch of the Social Democratic Federation, have no sympathy with the conduct of the prisoners'!

Fred Charles remained inside for 7½ years before his eventual release.  When Robert travelled down to Portland Prison, Dorset in November 1894 to visit Fred, the authorities refused him admission. 

Bingham doggedly continued to argue for anarchism and was grudgingly recognised by the local press as 'Mr Anarchist Bingham'.  When anarchist journalist David Nicoll was released from prison, Robert offered him a home in Sheffield.  Nicoll was incarcerated for accusing the police of framing the 'Walsall Conspirators' and revealing Coulon’s role in the affair.  With Robert’s support David Nicoll was enabled to publish several invaluable anarchist pamphlets during the three years he lived in Sheffield.

Let them Eat Bacon!

As an anarchist grocer, Robert attracted mocking comments from critics who thought anarchists should only survive in the impoverished cracks and crevices of society.  In 1894, a correspondent to the Sheffield Daily Telegraph ridiculed Robert’s anarchist-communism by suggesting, “Mr Bingham, by way of example, begin the sharing-out system by distributing his stock of bacon, hams and other provisions among his comrades.”  The sarcasm was unwarranted as Robert showed when police prosecuted the manager of the Mexborough branch of his grocery chain after he absconded with money out of the till.   Apprehended by Sergeant Forman, the prisoner, who expressed his sorrow for the offence, said, “I have been horse racing and mixing up in bad company”…  As the prisoner admitted his guilt, Mr Bingham did not wish to press the case.”

Pillar of the Community

Robert’s last libertarian campaign came in 1898 when he organised the UK speaking tour of the American libertarian, William Francis Barnard. Reporting on Barnard’s Bradford engagement, at Laycock’s Coffee House Lecture Hall, the anarchist journal Freedom observed that, 'his lecture on Government proved that government per se is exploitation'.  Enquirers were directed to Robert’s shop premises at Lady’s Bridge Buildings, Wicker, Sheffield.

Anarchism in England and Sheffield was by then but a pale shadow of its former self. Fred Charles and David Nicoll had returned to London and Creaghe’s adventurism had alienated Edward Carpenter who’d shifted into the state socialist camp and started a new Sheffield Socialist Club free from of anarchist taint. 

Robert Bingham eschewed the political manoeuvrings of the Sheffield Labourites and instead worked with the 'Young Liberals'.  When Robert died in July 1934 he was granted an accolade given to few other English anarchists, a lengthy positive obituary in his local newspaper, of which this is but an extract;
“The death has occurred of Mr Robert Sykes Bingham, known as the father of the Sheffield provision trade, also known as an ardent enthusiastic and determined political worker.
In his early days he experienced a great deal of the rough and tumble of politics. He regularly stood near the Monolith in Town Hall Square and talked advanced views to the crowds until the Monolith actually became to be known as Bingham’s Monolith…
He was a friend of many prominent people including William Morris, the poet and Prince Kropotkin, the Russian social worker (sic)…”

Christopher Draper – November 2016

(The eleventh in a monthly series of “Northern Anarchist Lives.”)

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)