New article from the latest issue (#6, May 2023) of the Radical Bookselling History Newsletter from the Alliance of Radical Booksellers
June 8, 2023

A long article about Anarchist Papers, Publishing and Bookshops, by Dave Cope, starting from two books: Rob Ray’s A Beautiful Idea: History of the Freedom Press Anarchists and Albert Meltzer’s autobiography I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels, representing two different trends of anarchism.

Anarchist Papers, Publishing and Bookshops: An Introduction
By Dave Cope

This introduction to anarchist papers, publishing and bookshops starts from two books - Rob Ray’s A Beautiful Idea: History of the Freedom Press Anarchists, Freedom Press, 2018 and Albert Meltzer’s autobiography I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels, AK Press, 1996 – representing two different trends of anarchism.

Ray was an editor of the paper, and so is fully supportive of the organisation, but he is very honest about its errors and weaknesses. He also gives space to voices from other anarchist traditions that were critical of Freedom and Freedom – and some of the disagreements and splits were very deep and bitter, but this will not be surprising to those who have followed our history of radicalism. Ray is a model of fairness in describing these events, which can be quite complicated, and gladly acknowledges the help of others and welcomes corrections. Meltzer was unapologetically sectarian, scornful of the Freedom tradition in particular, but he was active for over 60 years in the movement, read widely, knew many of the main activists in the different trends and had a sense of history and of the need to record it.

Quotes are from Ray or Meltzer unless otherwise stated and most will relate to the book list at the end.

I do not intend to engage, much, with the principles and practices of anarchism in this article – that sort of review would be better left to someone with a deeper knowledge of the movement or from the anarchist tradition. There is one such review of Ray accessible on the website of the Kate Sharpley Library – a great source for anarchist history.

I will concentrate on the publishing, the magazines - and the bookshops, of course, though there were very few for most of Meltzer’s life, and in Ray’s book only the Freedom shop is covered. I have yet to discover other sources for the bookshops but a more detailed reading of the anarchist press may help. Given the small numbers in the anarchist movement this is not unexpected. And we also know of the reluctance of bookshops to keep records, and to record memories - all understandable given the pressures activists are generally under. Sitting down to write a history is a rare luxury for an activist involved in a business who is often a volunteer or at best a poorly paid worker.

I will add comments on other anarchist magazines and publishers for context and comparison and a pointer for future research.

The first anarchist pamphlet, according to Ray, was A Contribution Towards the Elucidation of the Science of Society published in 1853 by the Confederation of Radical Reformers ‘perhaps the first known overtly anarchist group’. The author was Ambrose Cuddon ‘the first known anarchist in Britain’. Max Nettlau gives Joseph Lane’s An Anti-Statist Communist Manifesto this honour (in Freedom October 1926).

Heiner Becker wrote a very useful ‘Notes on Freedom and the Freedom Press, 1886-1928’ in the Raven No.1, 1987. He lists three sources of British anarchism. Benjamin Tucker’s magazine Liberty, published in America from 1881, and which was distributed in Britain. Secondly, the political refugees from Europe and the clubs they set up – the International Club in Rose Street then the Homerton Social Democratic Club. These early socialists or anarchists, the distinctions were very fluid, came from Germany, France, Italy together with the East European Jewish immigrants. In Britain, Lane and Samuel Mainwaring (who was to bring Tom Mann into the socialist movement) were the most influenced by this trend. And thirdly, the Jura Federation in Switzerland, an area bordering France, which became the political home for Bakunin and Kropotkin.

The anarchist movement really came into organised existence in Britain in the mid-1880s, as a split from the early modern socialist movement. Foreign language papers were being sold in London before this. French exiles who had participated in the Paris Commune of 1871 had well established support networks by 1872 and there were a large number of journalists among them; unfortunately, the sectarian political divisions were also imported. Some of these papers were anarchist. The Arbeiter Fraint, a broad-based Yiddish paper, was published in London from 1885. It came under anarchist control in 1888, and was relaunched by Rudolf Rocker, a German but not Jewish, in 1898.

The first regular English anarchist paper was Henry Seymour’s Anarchist, started in March 1885, and it led to the creation of the Circle of English Anarchists later that year. Seymour was an interesting figure. His initiation into anarchism was through Proudhon and Tucker (he was an agent for Liberty). He was the owner of the International Publishing Company (with co-owner William Willis-Harris), which published and printed the paper and also an early unauthorised edition of the Communist Manifesto in 1886. This was on top of various anarchist classics by Kropotkin, Proudhon and Reclus. Seymour himself was a supporter of mutualism, which placed emphasis on the role of co-operatives in a post capitalist economy. He was also a very early member of the Fabian Society, and he wrote 50 years later that ‘he was in friendly contact with...Edward Carpenter, Belfort Bax, Walter Crane’ and leaders of the Fabian Society. His paper carried articles by Bernard Shaw and his Fabian links helped its promotion. He must have also met Charlotte Wilson at this time - she was the first woman on the Fabian Society’s executive, in 1884, and was one of the joint editors of the Anarchist with Seymour, Kropotkin, Francesco Saverio Merlino, and Nikolai Tchaikovsky. Seymour wrote that he ‘soon found that...I had to do all the drudgery of production, supply most of the cost, while the others were content to write, excellently and otherwise. We had a ‘tiff’ and parted’.

Seymour was also the second editor of The Adult: A Journal For The Advancement Of Freedom In Sexual Relationships, following the arrest and imprisonment of the first, George Bedborough, a bookseller and journalist.

These links between individuals and organisations on the left, whether anarchist or socialist, are typical of the period before positions hardened with WW1 (though anarchists, socialists and pacifists opposed to war did work together in mutual support) and then the Russian Revolution. The other British ‘anarchist’ paper was Commonweal, founded by William Morris as the official paper of the Socialist League in February 1885 and which lasted until May 1894. Many writers on this period consider this to have been the best socialist paper of the 19th century under Morris, who remained editor until 1890 when the anarchists within the organisation voted him out, but still accepted his monthly donation of £10 towards the cost of the paper. Morris resigned from the now anarchist Socialist League at the end of the year. Morris was without doubt a Marxist, but his anti- parliamentarism, his libertarianism and his non-sectarian attitude were, and remain, appealing to anarchists.

Morris’s successor was David Nicoll, ‘a simple, good-natured man’ according to George Cores, who later helped set up the London Freedom Group. His naivety led him to be taken in by the French spy Auguste Coulon, who also persuaded Louise Michel of his anarchist credentials and employed him at her Socialist school in Fitzroy Square. Coulon’s articles in Commonweal were a call to violence, the first of a series of examples of state infiltration and provocations, which continue today.

Nicoll provided an early summary of anarchist strategy in an article in the Commonweal on May 23, 1891: ‘It must be our aim, as Anarchists, to stir up revolt on every possible occasion, and to bring the law and its officials into derision and contempt. Individual assaults on the system will lead to riots, riots to revolts, revolts to insurrection, insurrection to revolution’. He wrote ten pamphlets, most on contemporary anarchism and the police, courts and prisons. All were self-published, apart from his first which came from James Leatham in Aberdeen, an important early socialist publisher. Nicoll himself was imprisoned for incitement to murder - he had rhetorically asked if the Home Secretary and the judge in the Walsall anarchist trial ‘were fit to live’. After serving eighteen months, the Commonweal group refused to have him back as editor, a decision which Cores deplored, and which deepened Nicoll’s mental health problems, eventually leading to paranoia. Nicoll did edit the Anarchist between 1894 and 1897 in Sheffield, and produced, as publisher and printer, nineteen issues of a revived version of the Commonweal between 1896 and 1901. He ended his life in poverty as a street vendor selling his own pamphlets.

Sheffield was home to the first provincial anarchist paper, the Sheffield Anarchist, published by Dr John Creaghe for the Sheffield Anarchist Group. Cores writes that it was ‘Probably the most outspoken paper ever published in this country’. Sheila Rowbotham in her biography of Edward Carpenter is more precise: ‘It was defiantly anti-respectable, calling on unmarried mothers and prostitutes to join the movement and enthusiastically endorsing free love’. It was fortnightly and lasted for eight issues between June and October 1891. Unpriced, it stated ‘Pay what you like’ on the cover – a rather modern experiment. Sheffield had a comparatively strong anarchist identity. Others involved were Fred Charles, Cyril Bell - and Edward Carpenter, who was prepared to describe himself as an anarchist at the time, but he was closer to William Morris’s position and he was furiously criticised by Creaghe.

A small group based around Kings Cross in London published the Alarm (ten issues in 1896), from 127 Ossulston Street. There was another local group in Hammersmith who produced Liberty, James Tochatti, a tailor whose shop was ‘a centre for local propaganda’ being the key figure in this as he owned a printing press. A monthly, it lasted three full years, 1894 to 1896. Contributors included Malatesta and Seymour among others. Tochatti ‘circulated many thousands of pamphlets’ in Cores’ words but I can trace no publications by him.

To return to the original Commonweal, the next editor was Henry Samuels (‘a nasty piece of work, disruptive and aggressive and dogged by persistent rumours that he was in cahoots with police spies’ (Ray). In 1894 Samuels’ brother-in-law, a young Frenchman, died when a bomb he was carrying near the Greenwich Observatory exploded prematurely. The paper struggled on until the following year under Frank Kitz before collapsing, and some of its volunteers including John Turner the publisher moved over to Freedom.

Charlotte Wilson, closely involved in Anarchy, became a key figure in Freedom, the first of a group of impressive women writers and journalists who joined the anarchist movement. She wrote on anarchism in What is Socialism, Fabian Tract No.4. She resigned from the executive of the Fabians in 1887 but retained her membership for another twenty years - unusual for an anarchist. Freedom appeared in October 1886, founded by Kropotkin and Wilson from the premises of the Freethought Publishing Company and printed at the Socialist League offices. It was subtitled a ‘Journal of Anarchist Socialism’ which soon became ‘Journal of Anarchist Communism’. Most of the work - and financial support - fell on Wilson’s shoulders as Kropotkin was not in good health, though she was ably assisted by Nannie Dryhurst, who was also a capable translator, which was useful in bringing in foreign contributors. Wilson was very open in her working practice – she submitted her articles to the group for comments.

Article continued in Radical Bookselling History Newsletter, Issue 6, May 2023 – a bumper edition: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1luwgeB48x4JPId50Wbs8dCIKmfLqWwbr/view

Also in this issue:

Reports and images from last November’s Quiet Revolutions conference and book fair, at which many of you signed up for the Newsletter, along with a reprint of Ken Worpole’s New Statesman article prompted by the event.

Articles on Grass Roots Books, the researching and writing of that article and the creation of a Wikipedia entry for Publications Distribution Co-operative.

Lucy Brownson telling the story of Sheffield’s radical bookshops.

A review by Ross Bradshaw of Queer Print in Europe.

Our regular features of short announcements – including several links to online bookshop histories – and, inevitably, more obituaries.

An announcement of Ross Bradshaw’s talk ‘Changing the World One Book at a Time: a short history of radical bookselling’, which he’s giving on Thursday May 18th, 7pm at Nottingham Trent University. The talk is part of the Periodicals and Print Culture Research Group’s Radical Print Summer School: we hope to bring you a report in our next issue. More information about the Summer School here and tickets for Ross’s talk here. We apologise (especially to Ross) for the late notice about this event, caused by a delay in producing the Newsletter.

As always, we welcome any comments on this Newsletter, or previous issues, and suggestions for future articles or features.

Best wishes

Dave, John, Maggie, Rick

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