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Anarchists in Britain Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

David Stafford
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Extract

IN 1965 IT WAS POSSIBLE FOR THE AUTHOR OF AN ARTICLE ON THE anarchists in Britain to begin by observing that anarchists no longer figured in the popular consciousness and that the existence of anarchists could occasion as much polite surprise as the continued existence of the Independent Labour Party. This present article and its inclusion in a special issue on Anarchism is perhaps in part a proof that this situation is no longer true, and that anarchism has recently attracted sufficient attention to justify a new and closer look at anarchists in Britain today. It would hardly be rash to argue that whatever else may be true of the Left in Britain in 1970, the anarchists’ presence deserves to provoke much less polite surprise than it may have done five years ago.

This article is not, however, a description of the shape and variety of anarchists and anarchist groups to be found in Britain today. It is rather an attempt to describe one particular facet of anarchist thought which has characterized anarchism in the 1960s and to relate this to the ‘anarchhation’ of the New Left described by James Joll in his concluding article. It is to that extent an extrapolation and abstraction from a very wide range of alternatives and undoubtedly presents a picture which many anarchists would not recognize or would repudiate.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1970 , pp. 480 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1970

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References

1 Adam Roberts, ‘The Uncertain Anarchists’, New Society, 27 May 1965.

2 New Left Review, No. 1, January-February 1960.

3 Ibid., no. 6.

4 Ibid., no. 1.

5 Anarchy, No. 9, November 1961. And see also R. Lowenthal, ‘Unreason and Revolution’, Encounter, November 1969.

6 Solidarity, Vol. 2, No. 12. The Solidarity group is the most libertarian of the non-anarchist groups of the New Left, and has been responsible for publishing, inter alia, the writings of Kuron and Modalewski; it also has links with the French Socialisme ou Barbarie group.

7 Robin Blackburn, quoted in the Listener, 22 January 1970.

8 Lowenthal, op. cit.

9 Although his observations are confined to the United States, Jack Newfield’s A Prophetic Minority gives a valuable insight into some of the features of the New Left described here.

10 The Times, 3 June 1968.

11 The Times, 6 June 1968.

12 The Guardian, 19 April 1956. See also Solidarity, Vol. 3, No. 9, June 1965.

13 Clare Market Review, 1961. George Woodcock has described Anarchy as the best anarchist review to appear since the 1890s in France.

14 Colin Ward, ‘Anarchism and Respectability’, Freedom, June 1958.

15 Ostergaard, G., Anarchy, No. 20, 10 1962 Google Scholar.

16 Woodcock, George, ‘Anarchism Revisited’, Commentary, New York, No. 46, 2 08 1968 Google Scholar.

17 Anarchy, No. 74, April 1967.

18 Herber, Lewis, ‘Ecology and Revolutionary Thought’, Anarchy, No. 69, 1966 Google Scholar.

19 Colin Ward, ‘Industrial Decentralization and Workers’ Control’, Anarchy, No. 20, December 1961.

20 Paul Goodman, ‘The Black Flag of Anarchism’, New York Times Magazine 14 July 1968.

21 Nicolas Walter in Anarchy, No. 13, March 1962.

22 For an extreme example of the argument that the anti-bomb movement was futile, see an article ‘Anarchists and the Ç-Bomb’, in Freedom, 24 July 1960.

23 Freedom, 23 December 1961. As with most views expressed in Freedom, this was one which did not escape criticism from many anarchists.

24 Resistance, August 1964.

25 Nicolas Walter, ‘Damned Fools in Utopia’, New Left Review, No. 13/14, January–April 1962.

26 ‘What has it got to do with the Bomb?’Anarchy, No. 26, April 1963.

27 See D. Shelley, ‘Anarchists and the Committee of 100’, Anarchy, No. 50, April 1965.

28 Robert Swann, ‘Direct Action and the Urban Environment’, Anarchy, No. 41, July 1964.

29 Both were subjects to which complete issues of Anarcby were devoted: Anarchy, No. 2, April 1961 on workers’ control; Anarchy, No. 23, January 1963, on housing.

30 The anarcho-syndicalist tradition is represented by the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation, which sprang in 1954 from the Anarchist Federation of Britain, which the anarcho-syndicalists succeeded in ‘capturing’ after a split within the anarchists at the end of the second world war. Its newspaper, Direct Action (previously entitled World labour News), was published up to 1968, and the Federation appears now to be defunct. This tradition has adherents in the anarchist ranks and has been left aside in this article only because there has been no striking change in its traditional position. It should, however, be emphasized that the advocacy of workers’ control is not confined solely to this group.

31 Richard Boston, ‘Housing In’, New Society, 6 Match 1969.

32 Anarchy, No. 96, February 1969.

33 Freedom, 21 September 1968: Black Dwarf, 22 September 1968.

34 International Socialism, No. 41, December 1969. The International Socialist group is very deeply distrusted by the anarchists, who strongly criticize their ‘exploitation’ of the squatting campaign. It would be misleading to suggest that this was the only view expressed by the New Left, for in some ways it is uncharacteristic in its emphasis on the revolutionary role of the working-class, a subject on which the New Left as a whole is remarkably unclear. It can be usefully contrasted with the remarks of Marcuse on the disappearance of the old industrial working-class and the existence of a diffuse and dispersed mass base, which implies ‘not … a large, centralized and co-ordinated movement, base, which implies ‘not … a large, centralized and co-ordinated movement, but local and regional political action against specific grievances - riots, ghetto rebellions and so on; that is to say, certainly mass movements, but mass movements which in large part are lacking political consciousness and will depend more than before on political guidance and direction by militant leading minorities … the strength of the New Left may well reside in precisely these small contesting and competing groups active at many points at the same time, a kind of political guerrilla force in peace or in so-called peace … [foreshadowing] what may in all likelihood be the basic organization of libertarian socialism -namely councils of small manual and intellectual workers, soviets, if one can still use the term. I would like to call it organized spontaneity.’Black Dwarf, 28 March 1969.

35 Goodman, op. cit.

36 Anarchy, No. 4, June 1961.