OUR TITLE THEME THIS TIME: “WATCHING THEM WATCHING US”—DEADLINE 4 OCTOBER As long as there has been power, there has been resistance: just like those in power have always tried to tighten their grip and gain ever more control, people have always spoken out, pushed back and reclaimed their lives. In this present moment, we are seeing struggles around the crushing of protest, with state and corporate forces using ever closer and more detailed surveillance of popular resistance. For the Winter 2025 issue of Freedom, we want to hear your stories about what those in power are doing—and also how we are pushing back. How they are trying to make us governable numbers on a spreadsheet, but at the same time how we are miles ahead of their game and watching them as well. Please send us your writing about: * Surveillance from above * Information-gathering from below * The struggle to be able to protest at all * Lessons from history about resisting this kind of power-grab * How we have created our own forms of community and counter-power instead. Articles should be about 800 or 1,600 words long. Copy deadline: 4 October . Email your contribution—or a shorter pitch if you need encouragement—to editor@freedompress.org.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image: Steve on Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 The post Freedom seeks contributions to Winter print issue appeared first on Freedom News.

WE ROUND UP SOME OF THE TITLES TO KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR, FROM RETROSPECTIVES ON PUNK SOCIAL CENTRES IN LONDON TO THE LIVES OF BRILLIANT ORGANISERS AND MUTUAL AID THAT THRIVES IN THE WAKE OF WILDFIRES. Born of Struggle, Living in Hope: The Anarcho-Punk Lives of the Centro Iberico by Nick Soulsby PM Press (Oct) 192 pages | £14.99 The Centiro Iberico in London Notting Hill was for many years at the heart of Spanish anarchism in exile. Lasting for 12 years, it became a legendary music venue and the base of operations for civil war veterans such as Miguel García García, benefitting from its links to political punk through to its loss to gentrification in the 1980s construction boom. Soulsby analyses the centre and its importance to solidarity groups in Britain and Spain. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Love and revolution: A Politics for the Deep Commons by Matt York Manchester University Press (Jun) 216 pages | £25 York brings classical and contemporary anarchist thought into a dialogue with a global cross-section of ecological, anti-capitalist, feminist and anti-racist activists – discussing real-life examples of the loving-caring relations that underpin many contemporary struggles. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Associational Anarchism: Towards a Left-Libertarian Conception of Freedom by Chris Wyatt Manchester University Press (3 Jun. 2025) 224 pages | £25 Wyatt’s theory of political economy aims to unite the public sphere of citizenship with the private sphere of production in a system of communal ownership, through a scheme of self-governing horizontal networks held together by libertarian politics. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another War is Possible: Militant Anarchist Experiences in the Antiglobalization Era by Tomas Rothaus & CrimethInc PM Press (Jun) 448 pages | £26.99 Rothaus, who was active and present for many of the major events of the anti-globalisation movement around the turn of the Millennium, follows him through his early days as a militant across three continents. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Survival in California’s Fire Country Edited by Dani Burlison and Margaret Elysia Garcia AK Press 184 pages | £13 Named after the term for a high fire risk, Red Flag Warning explores fires in rural and urban Northern California. It examines relationships to place and community and the importance of mutual aid, organising, community care, land stewardship, and resilience. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre by Garrett Felber AK Press 424 pages | £27 Sostre (1923-2015), from East Harlem, was an anarchist and key figure in black radicalism in the latter half of the 20th century as a campaigner, jailhouse lawyer, bookseller and political thinker. A lifelong organiser against all forms of oppression, his decades of activism are recounted by Felber in what is the first biography to have been written about him. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Active Distribution meanwhile has the following due out over the summer: The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism, by Fredy Perlman Why Anarchists Abstain from Elections, by Tommy Lawson Against History Against Leviathan, by Freddy Perlman New Times, by Peter Kropotkin Society of the Spectacle and Comments, by Guy Debord Storming Heaven, by Roger Yates (Fiction) All Hands on Deck, by Jan Goodey The People’s War in Rojava (with new intro and update) Anarchist Techno Attacks, by Crimethinc Kropotkin Escapes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And Freedom Press has two books confirmed for this year: Housing: An Anarchist Approach by Colin Ward Continuing our series refreshing some of Ward’s key works. Ward produced some of the most influential anarchist writing to come out of Britain in the latter part of the 20th century, and housing was a specialist topic, taking in thoughts on squatting, tower life, self build and urban planning with a laser focus on the question of how we can, and should, be participants in the lifecycles of our own homes. Everything Continues: Anarchism and the Greek Financial Crisis by Neil Middleton Turmoil in Greece following the 2008 financial crisis was of a different order to that of anywhere else in Europe, lasting throughout the 2010s and destroying much of its economy. At the heart of popular revolt against the catastrophe was Europe’s most militant anarchist milieu, a force potent enough to control parts of Athens and overwhelm police lines, an embedded reality in the life of the nation. Neil Middleton examines the circumstances that led to this riotous assembly and how the anarchists’ story played out over a decade of tumult. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article first appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Freedom Journal The post Upcoming Anarchist Books for 2025 appeared first on Freedom News.

AS THE STATE’S MACHINERY OF REPRESSION GROUND SLOWLY ONWARDS, BOTH THE 10 MARCH AND 24 MARCH 1945 ISSUES OF WAR COMMENTARY, FREEDOM’S WARTIME NEWSPAPER, HAD EXTENSIVE COVERAGE OF ANARCHISTS BEING SENT TO COURT, SOLIDARITY ACTIONS AND CONTINUED POLICE SEARCHES ~ Rob Ray ~ The headline case, following on from raids at the end of 1944 and at the beginning of 1945, was the prosecution of four editors of the paper. Doctor John Hewetson, printer Philip Sansom, Vernon Richards and Marie Louise Berneri had been hauled into court (in Sansom’s case for the second time), accused of inciting disaffection in the armed forces. Magistrate Ivan Snell, known as London’s tallest lawyer and thought of as something of a liberal, at least for the bench at that time, heard from the prosecutor that the defendants, having laid out their position against the ruling class, government, Army and church, were urging the loyal British Tommy to “retain their weapons to enforce such opinions upon the rest of society.” The key phrase cited by the prosecution, via investigating detective Whitehead, was cadged from a short article on the inside cover of the 25 November 1944 issue of the paper. Specifically the article ‘Workers Struggle in Belgium’ which stated: “We are emphatically on the other side, that of the armed workers. And we repeat again what we said in our last issue — hold on to your rifles!” Four subscribers, including Colin Ward, were brought in for questioning *when asked whether they had felt “disaffected” as a result of reading the offending passage they said they were not), and the hearing was split into four parts – one early in the month, then on March 9th, March 16th and March 23rd before the full trial on 23 April. Bail was allowed, at the high price of £1,000 for Sansom (who had already previously been up in front of the beak), however two people who stepped forward to offer the bond were rebuffed after they refused to take the oath. (As an aside, the Communist Party’s Daily Worker, which also covered this event, were rather petty in disdaining the anarchists’ facial hair, describing the scene as one of “grumbling beards”). The legal defence was technically led by lawyer Gerald Rutledge, but as described by Ward in his excellent short essay on the subject, the real legal eagle was serial embezzler Ernest Silverman, who brought in top legal talent to pitch the line that the Freedom Group were upstanding citizens who hadn’t disaffected anyone. Of equal interest however were activities outside the court system, which is the subject of today’s Radical Reprint. The 24 March issue prominently lists the recently-formed Freedom Defence Committee, and its participants were a high-powered bunch: Chairman: HERBERT READ (prominent art historian and philosopher) Vice Chairmen: FENNER BROCKWAY (Socialist MP, famed pacifist and Spanish Civil War activist) & PATRICK FIGGIS (a well-known church socialist of the time) Secretary: ETHEL MANNIN (visionary author) Treasurer: S. WATSON TAYLOR (surrealist) Their statement of intent notes: “We appeal to all comrades end readers of War Commentary as well as to all who believe in the freedom of speech and publication to lend their financial support so that the work of the Committee may go forward. During these difficult years the four accused comrades have given all their energies to the cause of Freedom. The least we can do is to rally to their defence now that Authority has attacked them.” And a front page piece talks about the efforts of anarchists in Glasgow. It’s worth noting that the city has had a long and impressive history of working class anarchism, with Clydeside anarchism being in many ways its own distinct strain in comparison to the rest of the movement in Britain. Having them on board certainly couldn’t have hurt, and it’s their description of the situation reproduced below: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GLASGOW CALLS ALL WORKERS TO DEFENCE OF THE FOUR LONDON ANARCHISTS The following statement about the four arrested comrades has been produced in leaflet form by our Glasgow comrades and has been distributed by the thousand amongst Glasgow and Clydeside workers. Here’s to those who would read, Here’s to those who would write, But there’s not who are afraid, The truth should be heard, Than those whom the truth would indict. ~ Robert Burns. WORKERS! We call upon you to rally to the defence of our London comrades who are being charged with sedition. After the lessons of John McLean’s case in the last war, when this great champion of the workers’ cause who gave his all to educating the workers, was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on much the same charge, we call upon you, in your own interest, to take up the cause of the four comrades whose records in the class struggle we lay before you. I. MARIE LOUISE BERNERI Marie Louise Berneri was horn in Italy, but was forced to leave when her parents were hounded out of Italy by Mussolini because of their activity as Anarchists in the working class struggle against Fascism. Her father. Professor (Camillo) Berneri carried on the struggle in France, and served several terms of imprisonment for his defence of the workers. In 1936, the Spanish workers sent out their call of revolt, and Berneri was not found wanting. He Joined his Anarchist comrades in Spain and played a prominent part in the organisation of militias and fought himself on the front. He paid with his life for his militancy, being shot in 1937. During the present war, Marie Louise Berneri’s mother was arrested in France in 1940 and handed over to the Italian government. She was imprisoned in Germany and Italy, but is now free, and is carrying on the workers’ struggle in Southern Italy. After her father’ s death, Marie Louise Berneri came to England and acquired British nationality by marriage. She continued her activity with the Anarchists in producing the anti-fascist paper Spain and the World, helping Spanish refugees front the Civil War, and carrying on through the medium of Freedom Press her opposition to Capitalism, Fascism and Nazism. As is well known, the Anarchists have opposed the war from a working class standpoint as an imperialist war, warning the workers against Fascism at home. VERNON RICHARDS. Her husband, Vernon Richards, is well known in the work of Freedom Press. At the age of 18 he joined Camillo Berneri in the production of an Anarchist paper in Italian. When the Spanish Revolution broke out in 1936, when he was 20, he founded Spain and the World and edited it throughout the war, explaining to the workers in this country the significance of the Spanish Anarchists’ struggle. At the same time he helped support orphaned Spanish children, and later Spanish refugees who came to this country. Throughout his life he has fought against Franco, Hitler and Mussolini from the working class angle. At the beginning of the war he registered as a conscientious objector but was put on the military register and offered a commission in the Royal Engineers which he refused, and continued in his job as a civil engineer. He has never sought the limelight, but has been an untiring comrade in the cause of the oppressed. JOHN HEWETSON. John Hewetson is a young doctor, who before the war was active in the anti-war movement. In the struggle for peace he came to realise that War is the logic of Class Society, and unlike many, did not shrink from the recognition of this fact, but brought his activities into line with his knowledge. Joining the Anarchist movement in the first year of the war he continued to expose war and capitalism, being more convinced by what he saw in the casualty departments of hospitals of poverty — and war stricken London. Unlike many who shouted for war. Comrade Hewetson stayed in London throughout the blitz of 1940-41 and 1944. He was imprisoned in 1940 for selling a working class paper outside Hyde Park and refusing to pay the fine. Again in 1942 he served two months for refusing to accept a commission in the R.A.M.C., contending that the civilian working class were entitled to more medical attention than they were getting, and opposing the wholesale drafting of doctors into the Army. Comrade Hewetson is the author of a new pamphlet on Italy after Mussolini which would already have been in circulation but for the police raids on Freedom Press. PHILIP SANSOM Like Comrade Hewetson, Philip Sansom also worked in the anti-war movement, but when the war came it became crystal clear to him that to try and abolish war was hopeless so long as there were oppressed and oppressors in society. Although a talented young artist who could quite easily have attained comfort on the side of the oppressors by selling his talents in the commercial field, he entered instead into the class struggle, gladly taking sides with the oppressed. He has bent his whole energies unsparingly, and without thought of monetary gain, in the movement of his class — the workers of the world. None of these comrades has ever been a member of a political party or received any payment for the work they do in the class struggle. All of them earn their own living, like other workers. We lay their records before you, the workers, to give judgement and help us to create a tremendous defence. Remember that P. G. Wodehouse, who broadcast from Berlin many times during the war had no charge brought against him; Badoglio, the murderer of Abyssinia, has been feted and whitewashed; Mosley has been released from gaol. Workers, awake and watch! Be on your guard, lest in the “fight for democracy” all you will have won will be Fascism! Don’t let men and women who champion the cause of the workers go down before the onslaught of reaction! They need you, you need them. These comrades have fought for years on your side. Give them all you’ve got! The post Radical Reprint: Defence of four London Anarchists appeared first on Freedom News.

FOLLOWING RAIDS ON FREEDOM PRESS BY SPECIAL BRANCH, AT THE BEHEST OF THE HOME OFFICE, WHICH HAD BEEN REPORTED IN JANUARY 1945 (RECOUNTED IN LAST MONTH’S COLUMN), PRESSURE WAS KEPT UP WITH A SUCCESSION OF COURT CASES, REPORTED ON AT LENGTH BY THE RIGHT-WING PRESS ~ Rob Ray ~ That the February 24th edition of War Commentary, then the paper of the Freedom Press group prior to its relaunch, once again, as Freedom later in the year, came out at all was a minor miracle. The collective had been seriously set back not just by the seizing of its subscriber list and other files, but by the arrest of its entire core editorial team and, just as difficult, a decision by their landlord to kick them out rather than put up with the drama. Up and down the country, using the seized list, barracks and homes were being raided in an effort to gather evidence for the State’s line that Freedom Press was committing sedition by “seducing” the armed forces. Among those having their collars felt was Colin Ward, then a young conscript up in Scotland, who recalled: “I was in a Military Detention Camp at the time and was escorted back to my own unit at Stromness, Orkney, where the commanding officer searched my belongings and my mail and retained various books and papers.” And George Melly, later to become a famed raconteur but at the time serving in the navy, was threatened with a court martial after “subversive literature” was found in his belongings. Nevertheless, there was no break in production, with the correspondence address simply shifting to be c/o Express Printers in Angel Alley. The printing house at 84a had been bought in 1944 as a business that catered both for sewing magazines and radical pamphleteering, and Freedom remains in the alley to this day, albeit across the road (84a was bought and demolished to make way for what is now the western wing of Whitechapel Art Gallery). The issue didn’t skimp on anarchist comment about the issues of the day – its splash remarks on the Crimea Declaration—but these events are well documented. For our purposes there were three stories on the State’s actions against free speech, including hints at what would form as the Freedom Defence Committee featuring a certain Eric Blair. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- JOHN OLDAY AND PHILIP SANSOM JAILED Our comrades John Olday and Philip Samson have recently been sentenced to twelve months and two months respectively and are serving their sentences in Brixton Prison. John Olday is too well known to readers through his two books of drawings The March To Death (ed’s note, the picture above is his cover sketch) and The Life We Live The Death We Die. to need further introduction. He took an uncompromising stand at the Old Bailey where he was charged with stealing by finding in connection with an Identity Card. We shall deal with his case, which dragged on for many weeks, in the next issue of War Commentary. Philip Samson who has designed many covers for and illustrated Freedom Press pamphlets and War Commentary articles was convicted of a minor charge and we reproduce below the report that appeared in the St Pancras Chronicle (Feb. 2nd 1944). “It is quite true that I am not concerned with his political views but I am concerned with his record generally as a citizen,” said Mr. Frank Powell, the Clerkenwell magistrate, concerning Philip Richard Samson (28) an artist, of Camden Studios, Camden-street, NW1. Samson was before the court on charges of obtaining an Army waterproof coat which he said he had bought from a soldier for 25s, and of failing to report a change of address. Inspector Whitehead said Sansom was connected with an anarchist publication named War Commentary, and had been sharing a studio with a deserter who had been sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment at the Old Bailey. Sansom provisionally registered as a conscientious objector in 1940, but his name was removed from the register by a tribunal. He appealed but in 1941 this decision was upheld. He was later granted an indefinite deferment under an agricultural scheme and took up employment as a tractor driver, but he left this and came to London without notifying the authorities. Mr. G. F. Rutledge, for the defence, pointed out that Sansom had no previous convictions, and submitted that the court was not concerned with his political views. Mr. Powell said he was entitled to consider whether any mitigating circumstances were to be found with regard to his behaviour as a citizen. On the contrary he had done his best to avoid sharing the burden which had fallen on everyone else. Sansom was sentenced to a month’s imprisonment on the first charge, and fined £5 or a a month (consecutive) on the second. Readers cannot fail to notice (a) that Inspector Whitehead of the Special Branch was dealing with a case which one can hardly connect with political activity and (b) that no effort was spared to try and influence the magistrate by introducing the Anarchist Bogey which Inspector Whitehead did with more gusto than the local paper report would indicate. Our readers will draw their own conclusions. We also learn that our comrade Tom W. Brown who as reported in earlier issues of War Commentary is serving a fifteen months sentence in Wormwood Scrubs, has recently lost two months remission of sentence as well as his right to receive or write letters for the the same period. It would appear that a letter he wrote which was passed by the prison censors was stopped by the Special Branch, who also read his correspondence. He was put on a charge, which the visiting magistrates upheld. To these comrades who are directly or indirectly serving terms of imprisonment because of their Anarchist ideas, we send our fraternal greetings and our assurance that the work for the new Society will go on in spite of threats and organised attempts to impede its forward march. FOUR LONDON ANARCHISTS ARRESTED OUR comrades Marie Louise Berneri. John Hewetson and V. Richards, were arrested at their homes at 7.30 a.m. on Thursday. February 22nd and taken to West Hampstead Police Station where they were charged with a number of offences under Defence Regulation 39a. They were later taken to Marylebone Police Court where they were joined by comrade Philip Sansom (who, as reported in this issue, is at present serving a 2 months sentence at Brixton). He was charged under the same Defence Regulation. All four comrades appeared before the magistrate, Mr. Ivan Snell. The charges were read out and we reprint them from the Evening News report of the same day: Charges against all of them alleged that between November 1943 and December 1944 , at Belsize Road, Hampstead and elsewhere, they were concerned together with other persons unknown in endeavouring to seduce from their duties persons in Armed Forces and to cause among such persons disaffection likely to lead to breaches of their duty. CIRCULAR LETTER Vernon and Marie Richards were also charged that on December 12, 1944, at Belsize Road, with intent to contravene the Defence regulations they had in their possession or under their control a circular letter dated October 25, 1944, which was of such a nature that the dissemination of copies among persons in his Majesty’s Services would constitute such a contravention. Hewetson was similarly charged with having in his possession or under his control documents dated October 2, 1944, at Willow road, on December 12. Sansom was charged with reference to a similar circular at his studios, dated December 30. Richards and Hewetson were also charged with endeavouring to cause disaffection among persons in the Services on about November II. 1944. NO REPLY Detective-inspector Whitehead, of Scotland Yard, told the magistrate, Mr. Ivan Suell, that when, at 7.30 a.m. today, he told Vernon Vernon Richards and Mrs Richards that he was going to arrest them they made no reply. At 8 a.m. he saw Dr, Hewetson at Willow Road, Hampstead. He made no reply when told he would be arrested. Sansom was charged at Marylebone, and replied: “I have nothing to say” In reply to Mr. Gerald Rutledge, defending, Inspector Whitehead said that Hewetson was the casualty officer at Paddington Hospital. Inspector Whitehead asked that the case should be remanded until March 9th and bail of £100 with sureties of £100 was granted to the three first named comrades. Comrade Sansom was taken hack to Brixton to complete his two months’ sentence. It has been decided to form immediately a Defence Committee and comrades will be shortly notified of its composition, and address. Helpers will he required and we are confident of the response from our comrades and sympathisers everywhere. THE PRESS & CID CHECK ON ANARCHISTS For space reasons is was not possible to reproduce the Press comments on the Freedom Press in the last issue of War Commentary but we promised readers that we should do so in this issue. Readers who may have cuttings which have not been reproduced in these columns are asked to let us have them for our files. The first comments appeared in the Daily Express for February 1st, and the Daily Telegraph of the same date. The Daily Express note was headed “YARD IS WATCHING” and reads: “Scotland Yard’s Special Brunch is inquiring into the origin, membership and activities of a new extreme left wing organisation using the title ‘The British Federation of Anarchists’. Inquiries have shown that there are a dozen leaders and about 150 members. A report is being made to the Home Secretary.” The Daily Telegraph report which appeared only in the 4 a.m. edition was headed “ANARCHY GROUP INVESTIGATION” and reads: “A report (dealing with the activities of a small group of about 300 self-styled anarchists is, I understand, being prepared for Mr. Morrison, Home Secretary, by Special Branch detectives. The group is controlled from a private house in West London. Its members several of whom are believed to be in the Services, are suspected of circulating pamphlets among the troops which Home Office legal experts consider to be seditious.” As readers will see, the Anarchist membership rose by 138 in the night! These two small notes resulted in a visit during the day of an Evening News reporter, a Daily Mirror photographer and a Daily Herald reporter. We declined the offer of appearing alongside the Daily Mirror’s pin up girls and made no statements to the reporters, but that same evening a front page report appeared in the Evening News, with double column headlines: “Files and Papers Carried off In Sacks” “SCOTLAND YARD DRIVE TO CHECK ON ANARCHISTS”, “Army and Navy Units Visited.” “The activities of a small Left Wing Group who are alleged to have been circulating Anarchist propaganda among members of the Forces and war workers arc under investigation by Scotland Yard’s special branch. At the beginning of this month Detective Inspector Whitehead and other officers visited the Orkneys and look statements from men in the Navy. Visits were also paid to certain military barracks in the North of England where the kits of soldiers were searched for documents. A raid is was made more than a month ago on the offices in Belsize Road, NW, of Freedom Press, which for some time has been publishing a fortnightly newspaper entitled War Commentary — for Anarchism.” FILES SEIZED The police seized files of the newspaper and filled sacks with documents and correspondence. A search was also made at the homes of certain members of the organisation. Detailed reports of the results of the officers’ inquiries have been submitted to the Home Secretory and the Director of Public Prosecutions. The offices of Freedom Press, in Belsize Road, Kilburn, are in a large private house. When I rang the front-door bell there today it was promptly answered by a pleasant faced middle aged woman. On my asking whether I could sec a copy of “War Commentary — For Anarchism” she readily took me to a room on the first floor where a table was spread with a pile of copies of the paper, looking as though they had just come from the printers. TOLD TO QUIT The room was in some disorder and the woman apologised, saying she was packing up as she was moving to a new address. “The landlord has told us to go” she said. “He does not like our business.” To a question whether the office had been used by the Anarchist organisation for meetings, she replied: “Some meetings have taken place here” The woman declined to give her name or say whether she was a secretary. VOLUNTARY WORKER “I am simply a voluntary worker” she said. “All letters should be addressed to the secretary.” In the two latest copies of War Commentary there are references to the police searches and a complaint is made that Freedom Press files and other materials seized have not been returned. In the issue of January 13 appears this statement: “Many subscribers will be without their copies of War Commentary. We have no means of sending out renewal notices.” UNENVIABLE POSITION “We are also in the unenviable position of not being able to send out accounts for money owing to Freedom Press which now runs Into several hundred pounds sterling, nor have we details of payments made and to be made for books received, thereby jeopardising our credit with suppliers.” It is also stated that “Our solicitors have written two letters to the Commissioner of Police, but have obtained no satisfaction.” Reference is made to “our readers in the Services who have been subjected to the indignity of being searched.” Their letters, it is declared, “show a spirit which is a source of inspiration and hope for the future.” The following morning February 2nd the Daily Telegraph had more startling revelations for its readers, but this time it was reserved for readers of its early edition and not of its 4 a.m. edition. Headed “ALIENS SUSPECTED OF SEDITION” it ran: “Special Branch detectives who have been investigating the activities of a group of Left Wing extremists which as reported in the Daily Telegraph yesterday, arc suspected of circulating alleged seditious literature near army camps and naval barracks, have, I understand, discovered that some of its members are of foreign origin. Detectives have visited the homes of some of the members of the group and have taken possession of large quantities of literature and files. When the enquiries are complete a full report will be submitted to Mr. Morrison, Home Secretary and Sir Donald Somervell, the Attorney-General. The post Radical Reprint: Arrests and jail terms for Freedom Press editors appeared first on Freedom News.

THE BEGINNING OF 1945 WAS A TURBULENT TIME FOR FREEDOM PRESS, ALONG WITH ANARCHISM IN BRITAIN AND WESTERN EUROPE ~ Rob Ray ~ While the Germans were mounting their last, doomed final offensive, the outcome of World War II was already no longer in doubt. The fascists had been routed in the East, invaded in the West, and to the South, Rome had fallen. It was time for what remained of the movement to consider its options. The signs were bleak. On the one hand, the war had largely sidelined the anarchists, as it had the peace and socialist movements, buried beneath the urgent necessities of global conflict. Its bombs and production quotas. The movement had lost some people to the war itself, some to the greater lure of the Communist Party. Even worse and unreported (for obvious reasons) in its major paper War Commentary was a rift in the movement that opened during 1944. As of January this had led to the splitting of the Freedom Group from the larger Anarchist Federation (not the same as the modern group).  The subject of today’s reprint is not on that topic specifically, but research by the Kate Sharpley Library is worth reading on how the crisis played out, leading to a group centred around Vernon Richards and Marie Louise Berneri taking full control. So by January, 80 years ago, the Freedom Group and its small band of anti-war activists were struggling on a number of levels, having worked throughout the war to bring out the paper while barely being tolerated by a security service, which had arrested the occasional contributor such as John Hewetson (in 1942, for draft dodging) and banned the Communist Party-aligned Daily Worker from 1941-42.  As of late 1944, however, even the limited tolerance of “more trouble to repress than to ignore” ran out. This change was linked particularly to the State’s own shift in priorities, away from total war to how on Earth it could reintegrate nearly 3 million armed and trained working class soldiers into a shattered capitalist economy with flattened housing and few prospects. Where War Commentary’s insinuations that perhaps more suitable targets than foreign fighters existed could be brushed aside in the fight against fascism, there might be rather more concerning implications for such language reaching the masses in years to come. On December 12th this rising concern led to a series of raids, including on the Freedom Press premises, then at Belsize Road, and at the homes of two comrades looking for incriminating materials. These were far from the only attempts to gather information on or repress the anarchists at the time, with Albert Meltzer recounting the story of Fay Stewart’s home being raided in an attempt to get the subscriber list for radical newsletter Workers in Uniform, and John Olday being arrested first for identity theft, then for desertion. Unlike the monthly Freedom papers of 1914, War Commentary had in large part kept up a hectic pace producing two papers a week with a volunteer staff, so it had more space and could react more quickly to events. Here I reprint the first of two articles in the January 13th and 27th issues. This would mark the beginning of a famous legal showdown known today as the War Commentary Trials, of which more will be written later in the year. POLICE STILL HOLDING FREEDOM PRESS FILES! Though four weeks have passed since the Freedom Press offices were raided, none of the goods seized have at the time of writing been returned by Scotland Yard. In fact, so far, not even an inventory of the items seized has been sent to our solicitors. We mention this not so much to explain any delays and errors in dispatching War Commentary and our publications to readers who sent orders at the time of the raid, but to show how it is possible under the pretext of obtaining information for one suspected offence to deal a blow which has no relation to the suspected offence and which can cause considerable inconvenience to the persons concerned.  Paragraph 2 of Defence Regulation 88A (the regulation under which the search warrants were issued) states that “A person authorised by such warrant … may seize any article found in the premises … which he has reasonable ground for believing to be evidence of the commission of any such offence. … Now the suspected offence is covered by Defence Regulation 39A the gist of which is that no person shall endeavour to seduce from their duties persons in His Majesty’s service, etc. … The method used by Inspector Whitehead and his men to find the evidence was to empty the contents from the different letter trays straight into sacks, seize invoices and account books which dealt entirely with transactions with bookshops and bundle them into sacks as well, seize the office typewriter and boxes containing stencils of addresses, letter books and other material without which it is virtually impossible to run a concern like Freedom Press.  During the search at the homes of two comrades professional notes which had not the remotest connection with politics and accounts from business firms for-goods supplied, as well as the account books and publishers invoices for Freedom Bookshop Bristol (2025 note, the Bristol bookshop, pictured above, ran for a time from premises at 132 Cheltenham Rd) were removed, such seizure presumably being classified as “reasonable ground for believing it to be evidence”!  It could be argued that it would have taken more than five hours to sort out all the material on the spot, but the fact remains that over four weeks have passed and the material seized is still in the hands of Scotland Yard. By retaining these documents they are making it extremely difficult for Freedom Press to carry on its “lawful business”. Many subscribers will be without their copies of War Commentary; we have no means of sending out renewal notices. We are also in the unenviable position of not being able to send out accounts for money owing to Freedom Press which now runs into several hundred pounds sterling, nor have we details of payments made and to be made for goods received thereby jeopardising our credit with suppliers. What means are there for redress? Our solicitors have written two letters to the Commissioner of Police explaining the position outlined above. As we expected, they have obtained no satisfaction; only a vague promise of an inventory of the material seized.  ***  Meanwhile the note which appeared in the last issue of War Commentary on the raid and of our having to move from Belsize Road has resulted in a very large number of letters from readers expressing their solidarity with us in this difficult period and their whole-hearted support for the work Freedom Press has been doing during these past years (see also Letters column on page 4). These expressions of solidarity give us that added amount of determination required to carry on when so many obstacles are being put in our way. To our readers in the Services who have been subjected to the indignities of being searched and their reading matter confiscated (2024 note: these included a teenaged Colin Ward) we have little to say. Their letters to us, in which the outstanding feature is their determination to maintain their opinions in spite of threats and searches, show a spirit which is a source of inspiration and of hope for the future. And they can be sure that Freedom Press will not waver in its fight for the rights of Free Expression in the cause of that future society we all desire in which man will be really Free. The post Radical Reprint: Freedom struggles against government raids appeared first on Freedom News.

A FIERCE WORKING CLASS PROPAGANDIST, MOTLER COULDN’T STAND THE STILTED, ESOTERIC TONES OF MANY ANARCHIST AND SOCIALIST WRITERS – AND WASN’T SHY IN SAYING SO ~ Rob Ray ~ Freedom was contacted, around this time last year, by a small production company interested in doing a documentary for the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust. What would a small publishing house in Whitechapel have to interest them, you ask? Well the tale, and the subject of today’s reprint, is that of a deaf-mute political firebrand. One of the anarchist movement’s lesser-known figures (bar the occasional historical talk), Leonard Motler was initially brought into the anarchist movement thanks in part to its trenchantly anti-war position and proved an immediate boon to the struggling London scene. A trained printer, talented artist and incisive writer, he was able to essentially function as his own publishing house, though he lent his energies to multiple projects around the movement, including as the printer of Freedom itself. Motler had written in to Freedom a few times previously, but his article in the December 1914 edition of the paper was laser focused on the question of how it had come to pass that the Great Unrest had become the Great War with nary a revolutionary whimper. In Motler’s view the left generally, the anarchists included, was far too fond of talking to its own reflection rather than making the effort to speak in ways the working class would identify with, and had thus talked itself into irrelevance. His pitch was clarity and, while he would go on to be the first of the anarchists to identify Russia’s revolution as a dud (describing it as “running agley” in 1917), he was in step with the radicals there on his quest for blunt, effective language. Like the Russians with their Rosta windows he was a proponent of the striking, illustrated front page. His writing was mostly shorn of references to proletariats and classic literature. An example of this style can be found online in his explanation of anarchist communism. Motler was key to keeping Freedom running during the war even through the State’s attempts to repress and imprison its editorship, and managed to keep Satire printing until April 1918, when it was shut down by the police. Sadly we’ve not heard back from the production team about their project at time of writing (though it is still listed at BSL’s website) so we can only keep our fingers crossed that Motler gets his documentary! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ON WAYS AND MEANS During the last few years the Anarchist movement appears merely to have marked time nearly everywhere. Several reasons for this partial standstill may be put forward. Amongst these the late labour unrest has been conspicuous. This unrest, culminating in the great strikes, brought matters to a head in the industrial world. Conciliation boards had been found out; agreements had proved one-sided; leaders too ready, nay eager, to temporise and compromise. Trade Union discipline broke down; the officials were flouted. In spite of a gradual rise in wages, food prices lowered the purchasing power. A sullen, bewildered policy of despair held sway. Apparently there was no absolute remedy, Anarchism and Socialism were rejected as not being immediately practicable. But shrinking as they did from the prospect of a revolution, Syndicalism with its crude simplicity was almost on the point of being welcomed with open arms. Then the government stepped in; the situation was saved; Capitalism breathed again. How could such a remarkable collapse occur when the workers were so evidently animated with a class-conscious solidarity? The answer lies in the brutal fact that the stomach bulks largely in working-class argument. They prefer the substantial crumb to the somewhat shadowy loaf in the distance. This is the reason Anarchism was — and will yet be — postponed for further consideration. This is the one fault of our propaganda; this is the stumbling-block in the path of our progress. We are idealists, not materialists. On the one hand, the workers see the evil of Capitalism and all its works. On the other, they see the glimmer of the City of Light, as yet to them intangible and unattainable. They understand the contrasts. Their minds readily grasp the fact that however delusive, the future may seem to be, it can at least be no worse than the desolation of the present. But between these two their minds cannot bridge the chasm. This is our work, then. We must bridge that chasm. Our propagandist energies must be devoted to this. We must come down from the clouds and face the problem on solid ground. Anarchism must, at least initially, be explained in terms of bread and butter. Let this be understood. I do not stand for mere Labourist compromise. I do not suggest the movement be side-tracked in favour of plaister and pilules. There is no danger whatever of the main idea being lost in a maze of palliatives. All that is wanted is a little plain-speaking. Let us be frank. We have had enough of the economic cant, We have used the dictionary too often. Exploitation, surplus-value, proletariat, infantile mortality, bourgeoisie — all these are but meaningless catchwords to the man in the street, Shades of Marx and Engels! What is a working man, to know of the “materialistic conception of history”? Let us be frank. We have had enough abuse of capitalists, rent-lords, and financiers. They, at least, do not misunderstand us. We have had enough abuse of the working class. Let us give Carlyle’s “twenty-five millions — mostly fools,” a decent burial — a good long rest. The working class do not understand us, They are not to be caught in the fine web of our verbiage. If we will persist in writing pamphlets and making pretty speeches in polysyllables, they will go on not understanding. Either we must descend to their plain brutality of words or we shall go on talking over their heads. They cannot see the argument for the wrapping of fine phrases. We must be curt, crisp, and to the point. There are two sides only to whom we can make any appeal. The first and largest consists of the working class world. The second consists of those idealists — call them what you will —who are more or less of our kidney. For these latter our present pamphlets and fuller works will suffice. For the former a new literature must be brought into being — plain, large-typed, and cheap. Also let us have more pictures. The workers love pictures. They can see things better with the help of a simple illustration. A symbolic representation of Labour as an armed Don Quixote leaves them cold. A corduroy-breeched labourer is more to their understanding. Finally, we must organise our propaganda. At present it is too scattered. There is no need to drill each group into distributing pamphlets with military precision. What I mean is that there must be some system in what we do. We have plenty of meetings, in sooth, but not enough distribution. The spoken word is readily understood — and as readily forgotten. The printed word lingers. Let us make our pamphlets, our books, our leaflets as plain and as interesting as speech. Let us see to it that the working class is reached by these. Let our propaganda be constant. The movement has marked time too long. Now for the grand march. Forward! ~ L A Motler -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- END OF YEAR NOTE: As we come to the close of 2024, so I will close this chapter of Freedom Press’s history, looking at the events of 110 years ago through our ancestors’ eyes. There’s much more to be said about the paper’s activities during the war itself, but in 2025 I’d like to leap forward a few decades, to the end of World War II. Like 1914, the year 1945 was a key period in the history of British anarchism, though for very different reasons. It includes the infamous War Commentary trial and its aftermath, a split which would characterise many decades to come — and the re-emergence of Freedom itself as a regular newspaper and hub of the post-war movement in London. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image: A sketch believed to be of Leonard Motler in Satire, March 1918, alongside some of his publications The post Radical Reprint: The frustration of Leonard Motler appeared first on Freedom News.

THE GREAT ANARCHIST HISTORIAN AND ACTIVIST LEFT US A MESSAGE FOR THESE DIRE TIMES ~ Natasha Walter ~ How do we keep hope and faith alive? People keep asking that question as we watch the climate slide into crisis, war crimes stream across our social media platforms, and authoritarian leaders take power. While our problems may feel newly pressing, a pamphlet published in 1969 was already discussing how easy it is in dark times to fall into a state of permanent protest — “the practice of many active anarchists who keep their beliefs intact and carry on as if they still hoped for success but who know—consciously or unconsciously—that they will never see it”. From this point of view, “there is no hope of changing society… What is important is not the future… but the present, the recognition of bitter reality and constant resistance to an ugly situation”. Still, the writer continues, “it is just as dogmatic to say that things will never change as to say that things are bound to change, and no one can tell when protest might become effective and the present might suddenly turn into the future”. And so, those who resist are “scouts in a struggle which we may not win and which may never end but which is still worth fighting”. These words come from About Anarchism, by my father, Nicolas Walter (1934-2000). This combination of cynicism about the present together with a continuing commitment to a better future is characteristic of his work. Today, on what would have been his 90th birthday, I feel the absence of his voice ever more keenly. At the recent undercover policing inquiry hearings I was amused to hear that Roger Pearce, the undercover police officer who spied on Freedom in the 1980s, gave this assessment of Nicholas Walter to his superiors: “a cautious, alert individual whose sardonic temperament is met with respect or intense dislike, but never indifference”. True enough, but he inspired a great deal of affection and love among those who knew him best. Pearce also shared his judgement of Nicolas’s key work: “This well-written pamphlet, produced by probably the most prominent of today’s intellectual anarchist genre, is of inestimable value to anyone seeking a survey of the anarchist scene which is both comprehensive and concise. It is cited time and again as the publication which guided the political and apolitical alike to espousal of anarchism”. Front page of The Sun, 10 July 1967 While an undercover policeman is hardly an objective reviewer of anarchist philosophy, that does seem a fair assessment. About Anarchism still bears re-reading, as does much of the rest of Nicolas’s output on anarchist history and ideas, which ran like a steel thread through Freedom – and related publications such as Anarchy, The Raven and Wildcat – all the way from 1959 to 2000. While so many of these articles and reviews were keyed into the historical legacy of anarchism, rather than its contemporary practice, his own ideas and writing now come into ever sharper focus. Whenever I go back to Nicolas’s work now I’m struck by how current, unfinished and probing it still seems. Although Nicolas had such unparalleled grasp of the history of anarchism, his work grew out of his activism as much as out of his research. Richard Taylor chose to end his recent book English Radicalism with an essay on Nicolas, whom he has described as “the most erudite and eloquent anarchist historian and analyst in post 1945 Britain. He was, moreover, a leading civil disobedience activist in the peace movement”. For Nicolas, there was no distinction between theory and practice. It was in the rise of the Committee of 100, the nuclear disarmament group dedicated to civil disobedience, that he found the chance to put the ideas that he had been exploring into practice in the early 1960s, and he seized that moment. This was the time when he came to the insight that he himself thought was central to his political philosophy, the idea that there can be no distinction between means and ends. He first explored this in a discussion of Gandhi’s philosophy in his 1962 pamphlet on civil disobedience, Nonviolent Resistance: Men Against War. “In the Indian dharma, as in the analogous Chinese tao, the way and the goal are one”, he wrote, and went on to state that this leads to “a healthy refusal to make any convenient distinction between ends and means”, as opposed to the views of western philosophers who “have tended to believe that if one takes care of the ends, the means will take care of themselves. This line of reasoning leads to Auschwitz and Hiroshima”. Nicolas returned frequently to the moral and political importance of remembering that the means and the ends are one. In one article published, unusually for him, in the Guardian (collected in David Goodway’s Damned Fools in Utopia), he laid it out with particular force. “Everyone says something should be done – we say do it yourself. The politicians say: If you want peace, prepare for war. We say: If you want peace, prepare for peace. They say the end justifies the means – we say means are ends”. The great force of this insight helped Nicolas and others to steer the political culture of the Committee of 100 and other groups that flowered at that time (such as the Spies for Peace and Solidarity) away from the hierarchies and discipline of the old Left and into the anarchist way of organising that attempts to build the non-hierarchical society we want, here and now. Committee of 100 sitdown in Whitehall, April 1961. Walter on far right, sitting down. In his 2023 book If We Burn, a study of recent resistance movements across the world, Vincent Bevins examines that key political insight and blames it for such movements’ inability to build conventional power structures. In doing so Bevins states that the idea that “means are ends’ was first enunciated by David Graeber in 2002. “In the 1960s, the New Left had insisted that means also mattered in addition to the ends. David Graeber… went even further. In a 2002 essay for New Left Review, he explained that … the means were the ends”. But Bevins and other observers of social movements need to look well further back for this idea — certainly 40 years earlier to Nicolas Walter, as well as to the anarchists and proto-anarchists who influenced him. As Nicholas said in 1962, when he saw to his irritation that people were putting forward anarchist ideas as totally new: “Are Winstanley, Rousseau, Godwin, Fourier, Owen, Proudhon, Bakunin, Morris, Kropotkin, Cole and all the rest really nothing more than names? Has the anarchist stream really been driven so far underground?” Too often our radical histories are ignored, our personal and political roots are pulled up, and it is hard to hear the roar of those underground rivers of dissent. When I hear protesters today stating that their prison sentences for protest are unprecedented, I remember that when my parents and their friends set up the Spies for Peace group in 1963, which broke into government nuclear bunkers to publish the secrets of the warfare state, they knew they were running the risk of much longer sentences than protesters risk today. In my recent book Before the Light Fades, in which I tell the story of my parents’ involvement in the Spies for Peace, I quote my mother Ruth Walter: “We knew we were risking twenty years imprisonment, and that was scary but we knew it was the right thing to do. I was quite prepared to do it”. The Spies for Peace got away with their illegal actions, but Nicolas went on to be arrested for protest throughout his life, and was imprisoned for heckling a politician in 1968. He did that in protest at the Vietnam War, and in hindsight no serious commentator would argue that the protesters had got it wrong and the warmongers had got it right. Just as few would argue that the British government was right to keep secret from the people the plans for surviving nuclear war in the 1960s. Anarchists are so often doing the work that needs to be done in order to challenge the free operation of authoritarian governments, and yet now just as then, their reward is mockery and imprisonment. Nicolas Walter in 1996, in his wheelchair (he was disabled by side effects of radiation for cancer) We cannot afford to keep losing the histories of our movements, when we so badly need them, not just to understand the past, but to help us consider the possibilities of the present. We need to understand that there were always other forks in the road, and that those paths may still be rediscovered now. Nicolas Walter’s understanding of the anarchist past was a key to his continued faith in the future. As he once stated with disarming confidence, “It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion”. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Natasha Walter is an author, journalist, and founder of Women for Refugee Women The post Still worth fighting: Nicolas Walter remembered appeared first on Freedom News.

THE ANARCHIST SPLIT OVER THE GREAT WAR (WW1) BURST INTO PRINT IN NOVEMBER 1914, WITH GRAVE CONSEQUENCES ~ Rob Ray ~ One of the most famous articles Freedom ever carried, at least in historical terms, was a piece by Errico Malatesta, that titan of the Italian anarchist movement, entitled ‘Anarchists Have Forgotten Their Principles‘, in November 1914. This strident rebuttal of the hawkish attitudes being displayed by some of Europe’s major anarchist theorists, most notably Peter Kropotkin, is broadly considered a turning point in the movement’s attitude towards the Great War (later “World War 1”), helping to solidify a pro-revolution, anti-militarist message that would characterise its writing and activism for the next several decades. In it, Malatesta notes: We have always preached that the workers of all countries are brothers, and that the enemy—the “foreigner”—is the exploiter, whether born near us or in a far-off country, whether speaking the same language or any other. We have always chosen our friends, our companions-in-arms, as well as our enemies, because of the ideas they profess and of the position they occupy in the social struggle, and never for reasons of race or nationality. We have always fought against patriotism, which is a survival of the past, and serves well the interest of the oppressors; and we were proud of being internationalists, not only in words, but by the deep feelings of our souls. And now that the most atrocious consequences of capitalist and State domination should indicate, even to the blind, that we were in the right, most of the Socialists and many Anarchists in the belligerent countries associate themselves with the Governments and the bourgeoisie of their respective countries, forgetting Socialism, the class struggle, international fraternity, and the rest. What a downfall! This essay has, however, already been pored over extensively , to the point where it overshadows just how even-handed editor Tom Keell was trying to be on the topic. The same issue, for example, contains sentiment in favour of resistance by both the Belgian and French peoples from the likes of Tscherkesoff, Verbelen, and Kropotkin himself. Malatesta’s piece being well known already, with lots of links to it, I will instead pick out a piece from Jean Grave, a long-time and very well-respected figure who had worked with Kropotkin on several French-language newspapers. Grave, who like Kropotkin came out as pro-war, eventually co-signed the Manifesto of the Sixteen calling for anarchists to join the fight against Germany, a document which primarily served to alienate the signatories from the movement at large. Grave’s write-up is impassioned, and highlights both correct and incorrect ideas in the dissenters’ overall viewpoint. It is now known to be correct, for example, that the groundswell of social revolution was not potent enough, outside of Russia, to end the war. And it was dead wrong to think that this would be the last war, that the horror would persuade all peoples to finally end the dominion of those who sent them to die in muddy trenches and starve for lack of food. As a historic artefact, the whole paper is one to be read and thought about. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OUGHT ANARCHISTS TO TAKE PART IN THE WAR? Ought we who are Anarchists to take part in the war which is now devastating Europe? Or ought we to abstain from doing so? The question presents itself to our English comrades in a way that it has never done in France, where the German invasion left no doubt of the attitude to take: that of self- defence. Surely there should have been a better solution, one more logical, more dignified: an appeal to the proletariat to free themselves from oppression, to take possession of the national wealth, to invite the peoples to the Communistic life, to arm all those capable of wielding a weapon, transform each house into a fortress, break up the roads, destroy all on the enemy’s road, organise flying columns to harass him day and night, cutting off his communications, making a desert round about him. But for such a course public opinion should have been previously prepared, and we Anarchists more numerous, more resolute. The atmosphere of 1792 was needed, when revolution was in the air. Under the actual circumstances, to attempt such an insurrection would be worse than madness. Not only could there be no chance of success, but no chance of being understood; on the contrary, it would have been playing into the hands of the invaders. Now, if we are against the oppression of our masters at home, this is no reason why we should desire to help those who present themselves from without, especially when we know their rule would be a hundred times more irritating, more arbitrary and crushing. A question of degree ? No! The triumph of German militarism would mean the stifling of free thought for centuries the impossibility of continuing to wage our war against social iniquities. Human thought is crushed beneath the heel of the Prussian trooper. As to remaining neutral, mere onlookers, an Englishman hag only to put himself in imagination in the place of a French comrade, whose country is invaded. Could ho submit to the exactions of a conqueror in cold blood? Could he calmly look on the excesses of triumphant soldiers, who, difficult to support in ordinary times, have become worse than infuriated brutes in a conquered country ? To refuse to take part in the defence is to play into the hands of the invader. Respect for our own dignity forbids us to remain neutral. No doubt the war was willed and prepared for by Germany, but she was not alone responsible. It would be wilfully shutting our eyes to evidence if we refused to believe that German diplomacy has been driven to develop her dream of Pan-German nation by the intrigues of the foxy diplomats who have striven to isolate her. But to establish all the responsibilities would lead us too far, and may form the subject of another article should it interest the readers of Freedom. What, is certain is that the war let loose, France would speedily have been crushed, and the turn of England would have followed; therefore the British Government may be excused their decision to participate in the war, It was their one means of self-defence and self-preservation. No doubt we seem to have gone back on our theories. We have nothing of our own to defend in this land which is called “ours,” and which ought in reality to be ours. But if in defending it we defend the property of our masters, we also defend the little liberty we have gained, which we should certainly lose under the conqueror’s rule. We defend, above all, the right to continue our struggle towards a more complete freedom in the future. Unless we push things to a logical absurdity, we must, in trying to decide any question, consider every new factor in the case. Theoretically, in our native land, as things are at present constituted, we have nothing to defend but our skins. But is this really so? We live in society, and we suffer in our liberty and our well-being the repercussion of social changes. Now, if the oppression of our masters at home is insupportable, that of foreign conquerors were a hundredfold worse. And the new factor which has come to complicate our problem is the invasion of France by Germany, which has thrust us into a war that we have been unable to prevent. In submitting to the senseless growth of armaments for forty years, in permitting our diplomats to carry on their secret intrigues, the English and French peoples have their part in the responsibility for the war, just as the German people have their part of the responsibility, in that they submitted to the oppression of their junkers; and we and they pay for it by being dragged into a war which we condemn, but are forced, to suffer, and even to participate in if we do not care to Buffer worse things. This war must be the last, the end of wars. This fever of militarism must be the fall of militarism everywhere. Bat in order to arrive at tins, Prussian, militarism must first be destroyed. It must be disarmed, the German hordes must be driven back., the clique of agrarians, vestiges of the Middle Ages, must be humbled to the dust and when we come to talk of peace, it must be not with them, but with delegates drawn from the German people and chosen by them for the purpose. It has been too often forgotten, even by revolutionists and internationalists, that the German people consist of oppressed and oppressors. There are not only the masters who are the instigators of this storm which threatens to submerge Europe; there are also the serfs, who are no more guilty than we ourselves, save for acquiescence in serfdom and ignorance. We must destroy the caste of their masters, and force our own to treat with humanity those whom we have been obliged to combat in order to get at their oppressors. Peace, when it comes, must be a true and lasting peace — not an armistice, not a new beginning of a piling up of armaments leading up to another war no less frightful than this one, It is possible that the horrors of this war may render impossible another; that the misery in which the nations are plunged may teach them wisdom; but it would be foolish to rely upon the fatality of things. If we will not be taken in by the snares of diplomacy, we must declare dearly our determination that when once we have crushed German militarism, the autonomy of the German people bhal1 be respected, and that no servitude shall be imposed on them, no war tax or indemnity, Of course, the restitution of those indemnities which they themselves may have levied during the course of the war may be rightly exacted, but these should be paid from the private fortunes of those primarily responsible for the war, the Hohenzollerns, the Krupps, etc., etc. There should be no annexation of territory, The small nations should he set free to choose what form of government they prefer, and their independence should, be assured by their neutralisation. If we did not know the fear which our governments entertain for anything approaching the revolutionary idea, we should be surprised that some such campaign, urging conquered nations to free themselves, has not been already undertaken, together with one to enlighten the German people m to the true state of affairs. In order to claim the right of intervention in settling the conditions of peace when the moment arrives, we must take our part in helping to crush the nearest danger, Prussian militarism, not losing sight meanwhile of anything likely to secure our hopes for the future. It may appear strange that we, who did not know how to prevent the war, should occupy ourselves with the discussion of peace. But we must always act as we think right, without speculating as to whether we shall be strong enough to realise our aspirations, For my part, I think that our antlmilitarist propaganda has not been useless and that the air is permeated with our ideas even to-day; and that in this war, despite all the spirit of the public is other than it has been hitherto in any preceding war. It has been accepted as something inevitable, the work of a handful of bandits, who must be destroyed without exciting our hatred against the obscure soldiers, in whom we recognise their victims. And this makes us hope that we shall find aid in our new campaign in and from beyond our own ranks. J. Grave. The post Radical Reprint: Conflict and class struggle appeared first on Freedom News.