ANARCHISM

 

See Also: FASCISM; THE HARD LEFT ; ISLAMISM; MENU

 

European Anarchism

    The Paris Commune of 1871 provided an inspiration for Anarchists. The event s ruthless suppression by the French government furnished them with a licence to recourse to violence. This they conducted on an international scale.

    In 1878 Sergei Kravchinsky used a stiletto secreted in a newspaper to kill General Mezentsev, the head of Russia's counter-revolutionary Third Section, in a park. He made his getaway in a carriage that was pulled by a trotting horse. Subsequently, King Umberto I was killed, Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany manage to survive an attempt on his life, however, Tsar Alexander II did not.

    In turn, European counter-insurgents, such as Peter Rachkovsky of the Tsarist Okhrana (secret police) and Wilhelm Stieber of the Prussian army intelligence, operated on an international basis. Both men came to London in pursuit of their quarries.

    The novelist Joseph Conrad modelled the cynical, cowardly Comrade X on marquis Henri de Rochefort-Lucay.

    Nicholas Kropotkin postulated that an institution such as the British monarchy might be able to act as the guarantor of something resembling an anarchistic society .

    In 1894 Th odule Meunier (1860-1907) was arrested at Victoria Railway Station by William Melville, the Director of the Special Branch. At the time, the hunchbacked associate of the French anarchist bomber Ravachol (n Fran ois Koenigstein) (1859-1892), was seeking to escape from the French authorities.

    In 1894 Melville led a raid on the Autonomie Club in Windmill Street. This was decorated with portraits of Ravachol and Fenian terrorists. 60 people were arrested.

    The Anarchists and their opponents became figures in fiction. Rachkovsky was the model for Mr Vladimir of the Russian Embassy in Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent (1907). Oscar Wilde's essay The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891) was essentially a violence-free Anarchist tract. G.K. Chesterton's novel The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), in which every member of an Anarchist group was an infiltrator, was not so far from the truth.

    Location: Autonomie Club, 6 Windmill Street, W1T 2JB (purple, pink)

 

The Freedom Press

    The Freedom Press is an Anarchist publishing house. It was founded in 1886 by a group that included Prince Peter Kropotkin. The prince's Social Anarchism proved to be the principal factor in shaping Anarchism in Britain. It led to Communitarianism.

    In 1945 four of the Press's employees were arrested for trying to undermine the affections of members of His Majesty's Forces . The art critic Herbert Read led a protest against his fellow Anarchists treatment by the authorities. His effort drew the support of numerous contemporary cultural figures.

    Location: Angel Alley, 84B Whitechapel High Street, E1 7QX (purple, yellow)

    See Also: ARTS VENUES The Institute of Contemporary Arts, Sir Herbert Reed; SPECIALIST BOOKSHOPS, DISAPPEARED & VIRTUAL The Alternative Bookshop

    Website: https://freedompress.org.uk

    Anarchist Book Fair

    Anarchist Book Fair consists of bookstalls and meetings.

    Website: https://anarchistbookfair.london

 

The Siege of Sidney Street

    In mid-December 1910 a group of Latvian revolutionaries led by a man called Peter the Painter tried to rob H.S. Harris, a jewellers in Houndsditch. The crime was interrupted and the gang shot a number of police officers, three of whom - Sergeants Robert Bentley and Charles Tucker and Constable Walter Choate - died from their wounds. A fortnight later the Met were told that the gang was hiding out at No. 100 Sidney Street. The force laid siege to the property with vastly superior manpower and firepower. As Home Secretary, Winston Churchill chose to involve himself in the operation. Gunfire was exchanged for several hours. The besieged had far better fire arms; they seem to have set fire to the house. The minister barred the fire brigade from extinguishing the conflagration. Two corpses were recovered from the house. Neither of them was that of gang s leader, whose true identity remained unknown.

    The corpse of George Gardstein, a Latvian Anarchist, was recovered from a house in Grove Street. He had died as a result of a bullet wound. Three other Anarchists who had been living there had fled. Rewards were offered for the locating of Fritz Svaars, who was also a Latvian, and Peter the Painter . The latter became a legendary figure.

    Among those radicals who were rounded up was Svaars's cousin Jacob Peters, who was a Bolshevik. His political outlook allowed himself to be processed by the British justice system. Subsequently, he became a founder of the Soviet Union's Cheka security service.

    Funeral services for the three police officers were conducted at St Paul's Cathedral; 750,000 people lined the streets. Public subscription; the Rothschilds were prominent in this effort; it was part of an effort to distance the Jews from the Anarchists.

    Location: 119 Houndsditch, EC3A 7BT (blue, red)

    100 Sidney Street, E1 2ET (red, blue)

    See Also: WINSTON CHURCHILL; CRIME; JEWS The East End, Settlement In London and Politics

David Backhouse 2024