Autonomy - Daniel Poynor
Research Notes from the book's essays and interviews -
-Colin Ward
-First Published March 1961
-Offered new thinking on contemporary social and political problems from an anarchist point of view at the time of decline for anarchism while many of its ideas were slowly being adopted by a nascent counterculture on both sides of the Atlantic.
- 1947 - Ward joined the freedom press editorial on the anarchist weekly newspaper, which had now reverted to its pre-war name of Freedom.
- Ward wrote for and edited the paper for ten years.
-Ward saw 'A new potential readership for anarchist propaganda had emerged, not least because of the enormous expansion of the higher education, where, it seemed o me, political activity was dominated by automatic Marxism.'
(Colin Ward - 'A Decade Of Anarchy 1961-1970: selections of the monthly journal 'Anarchy'' (London Freedom Press, 1987) )
-Ward wrote articles in Freedom which often spoke of a monthly journal on anarchy.
- Monthly 'Would enable us to make more comprehensive and clearer statements of anarchist attitudes to the social facts of the contemporary world'.
- Earlier anarchist publication 'Die Autonomie' a German language newspaper published in London between 1886 and 1893.
- Ward's editorial style was Laissez-faire, contributors' articles were printed without much correction or alteration: he conducted the material, holding back some essays in order to compile issues later on a single subject such as education, housing or justice.
- Several designers, artists and illustrators enjoyed a free reign in making the cover for the journal. Martin Leman, John Riley, Ivor Claydon, Phillip Sansom and Colin Munro were among those who had covers credited to them, however the most prolific designer of the covers was Rufus Segar.
- Segar made liberal use of illustration, photography and typography.
- Mainstream view obscures a larger picture of anarchy, and the people who subscribe to its principles.
UTOPIAN SOCIOLOGY - RAPHAEL SAMUEL
- Britain has not been hospitable to anarchism, either as a social movement or a current of thought.
- In the twentieth century, too, anarchism, if noticed at all, typically appears under another name - the case for instance, with 'progressive' education to which anarchists have contributed inconceivably more than socialists.
- The 1960's are a singular exception to the neglect of anarchism and were generally recognised at the time, as they have been since, as a moment when libertarianism or 'permissiveness' shaped the hidden agenda of national politics; many of today's attacks on 'loony leftism' and indeed the phenomenon of Thatcherism itself, could be seen as a retrospective settling of accounts with it, particularly its decriminalisation of sexual non-conformity: in Ken Livingston's published autobiography 'If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it' the line of descent from anarchism is avowed.
-"Anarchy, the monthly journal edited by Colin Ward, represented, better than any other publication, the cultural revolution of the 60's; and it did so far earlier than anyone else and more thoughtfully."
- Anarchy began with an enthusiasm for direct action, it was born from the militant wing of unilateralism and it progressed via 'Do-it-yourself' movements in every sphere. as for example in its support for the revival of squatting.
- Anarchy anticipated more recent politics; a decade before Mrs Thatcher discovered that council housing was Labours Achilles heel, Colin Ward was advocating the transfer of ownership and control from the councils to their tenants - 'Dweller controls' as he called it - while Murray Bookchin offered pioneering essays on social ecology.
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Anarchy was a success, almost it seems, in spite of itself. Though a minority magazine, speaking for no discernible constituency, it created or drew strength from a whole new terrain of social politics in which local initiative counted for more than national direction. It radicalised a wide periphery of those who came within its orbit - most interestingly perhaps 'New society': a journal of straight and even commercial origins, edited at the outset by an establishment figure, which by virtue of shared contributors and preoccupations, took on something of 'Anarchy's' hue.
- No one hyped it, in the manner favoured by more recent left wing monthlies.
- The editing seems to have been a kind of triumph of negative capability.
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Anarchy was free of sectarian controversy.
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Anarchy was focused on the practical. It was concerned with realisable projects, living examples of 'is' rather than apocalyptic imaginings of 'ought'.
Anarchy was about doing things - 'Applied Anarchism' is a phrase used from early issues.
- 'Constructive antinomianism' would be another way of describing the political imagination at work.
- It dispensed with both the minatory and the denunciatory modes.
- It was concerned neither with enemies, without or within, nor even with the exposure of oppression, but primarily with constructive projects - adventure playgrounds, as 'parables' of anarchy; the 'little commonwealth' as a recognition of the therapy of work: free schools as a foretaste of the open city.
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Anarchy was neither exactly empirical nor theoretical but shuttled between the two.
- Questions were posed not by references to long-term programmes or theoretical protocol but by returning to first principles - a theory of human nature.
- No one promoted it (
Anarchy) or even (Except as amateurs and enthusiasts) worked for it (Martin Small one of its most prolific writers, supported himself by working as a waiter in Pizza Express).
- Anarchy seemed to derive its historic optimism from a view of human nature - or of human possibilities - rather than from developmental laws. The principles of anarchy could be illustrated easily by ancient Greece as by modern society. Nor did they depend, from their worth, upon winning mass support: it was enough that they were inscribed in practice.
- One of the strengths of 'Anarchy's position, by comparison with the 'New Left', was the absence of the existential or ontological doubt, the cheerful acceptance of a minority position.
- Anarchists did not have to impersonate an ideal constituency, to pretend that they spoke in the name of the masses: they were content to believe they were right.
- 'Utopian Sociology' a term which crops up in early issues of 'Anarchy' is a phrase worth pausing on, as pinpointing something distinctive both about 'Anarchy's' characteristic offerings and Colin Ward's subsequent work. These anthropological studies are raided - somewhat in the manner of Engels 'Origins of the family' - to give living examples of anarchy: tribes without rulers, architecture without architects, education without schools. 'Islands of Freedom' are discovered in the midst of mass society, self-made environments at the heart of megapolis.
- The dreariest circumstances can thus appear alive with the principle of hope: mutual aid can be asserted, in the face of fragmentation; individuality is a solvent of regimentation and rule.
- It is in the imagination of Kroptkins 'Mutual Aid' applied to the seemingly uncompromising circumstances of contemporary society or in an earlier anarchist metaphor - an eternity in a grain of sand. The visionary and the practical are one.
"This selection does not do justice to 'Anarchy'. For one thing, each of the issues was a unity, a pamphlet in itself. Whether the subject was the 'Little Commonwealth' - Homer Lanes therapeutic community - the world of Paul Goodman or (to take one of the genial early issues) 'Anarchist Cinema' each offered an imaginative whole." - Raphael Samuel
- 1966 was the seeming triumph of all that 'Anarchy' stood for, direct action, spontaneity, popular initiative. Yet in Britain as in France and Germany, it was not libertarianism, but a born again Marxism, of Maoist or neo-Trotskyist hue, which put itself at the head of the campus revolt, replacing real life self-assertion with make believe bids for power.
- Not anarchy but the revolutionary socialist student federation, the communist university of London and international socialism claimed to give direction to the campus activists, while the more bureaucratic turned to the machine politics of the national union of students and labour party general management committees.
- Most sadly for anarchism, there was the fact that what were basically libertarian initiatives, particularly feminism, and later the Gay liberation movement, grew up, by an accident of history, within the ambit of a socialist politics rather than an anti-authoritarian one.
- Shiela Rowbotham's 'Women and the new politics' 1969, a pioneering text for this new turn, had more affinities with libertarianism than marxism, but it appeared in the burgeoning pamphlet literature of something which believed itself, revolutionary socialist.
- One residue, however, which can be commented on, is the subsequent, work of Colin Ward, as distinctive and original as his editorship. - He has taken
Anarchy's concerns with the built environment into the heart of architecture and planning with a whole series of publications - such as the architectural press book 'Vandalism'. 1974, drawing on
Anarchy's subversive insights.
"If I may be permitted a sectarian observation - Colin Ward has turned himself into a quite remarkable historian"
" Scholarly and erudite, he (Ward) is an excellent storyteller with a capacity to discover or invert the truly memorable subject. 'Arcadia for all' his book about the 'libertarian suburbs' of the 1920's is a work of real daring, a rare and authentic example of 'history from below' - one which is attentive to 'ordinary' people without any attempt to corral them for a political project of the authors own. It is also a truly subversive account of the suburb, one which undermines bthe the aesthetic and the scial orthodoxies of our time"
ANARCHY AND THE 1950'S - RICHARD HOLLIS
- The time 'between the end of the "Chatterley" ban and the Beatles first LP' was, according to the poet Philip Larkin, the time when 'sexual intercourse began; the years 1960-3 were also when graphic design began, at least in England.
1960-3 - the First annual exhibition of the new designers and art directors association took place (1963), covers of penguin books were in course of a modernist makeover (Under Germano Facetti from 1960) the Sunday times magazine was launched (1962, lord Snowden as design adviser) 'Design was fashionable it was a lifestyle.
- When the novelist Colin Macinnes claimed that 'Anarchy' was 'revealing more information about out country than any other journal I know of' he was thinking of the established weeklies ' New statesman', 'Listener', 'The Economist', and 'Spectator' or heavyweight journals such as 'Encounter' or 'New Left Review'.
- If anarchism is an idea far removed from style, 'Anarchy' covers are none the less the recognisable of their period.
- 'Anarchy' designer, Rufus Segar, worked in London for the economic intelligence unit.
-The decade of 'Anarchy' publication was not only a turning point for political, social and aesthetic attitudes, but it coincided with revolutions in the ways of printing.
- Letterpress was slowly giving way to offset lithography, phototypesetting was taking the place of metal composition.
- Before the introduction of the personal computer, the production process was divided.
- On one side was the designer, who gave the instructions and specifications. On the other side were the print-trade specialists - typesetters, photo-engraver and printer.
== The First 'Anarchy' covers clearly show this division of labour. Headings and texts are printed directly from the printers, typesetting this was combined ith one or more photo-engraved books made from whatever Segar supplied as the 'Artwork'.
