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.