Anarchism in the United Kingdom

By the 1870s, anarchism had been introduced to the country from Europe and America and the establishment of the Labour Emancipation League (LEL) in 1881 marked the beginning of the organized anarchist movement in the United Kingdom.

The historian Peter Marshall traced the roots of British anarchism back to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, during which yeomans rose up against the Bad Parliament's poll tax, fearing it to be an attempt by the nobility to force the yeomanry into serfdom.

[1] The peasants were further agitated by the preaching of the radical priest John Ball, who conceived of the Garden of Eden as a state of nature where class stratification did not yet exist, attacked the institutions of private property and social inequality, and called for everything to be brought under common ownership and the creation of a classless society.

Although Richard II had promised them that he would free the villeins, the rebels demolished the Savoy Palace, released all the local prisoners and executed Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The King agreed to most of their demands in his meetings with the rebel leaders, during which Tyler called for the total abolition of serfdom and the expansion of liberty and social equality, while his more radical lieutenant Jack Straw allegedly declared that the noble and clerical classes would need to be exterminated.

[6] By the 16th century, the word "anarchy" was primarily associated with disorder and lawlessness, while the label of "anarchist" was pejoratively applied to anyone that upset the established order or refused to recognize the ruling power.

[7] In the lead up to the English Civil War, radical republican and democratic ideas were first starting to circulate, advocating the abolition of existing institutions such as the monarchy, church and feudalism.

In December 1640, 15,000 Londoners presented Parliament with the "Root and Branch petition", advocating for the abolition of the episcopacy, a proposition which was denounced as "absolute Anarchism" by the royalist MP Edward Dering.

[11] The radical democratic theses of the Levellers was rejected by Oliver Cromwell, who accused them of advocating the cantonalist practices of the Swiss Confederacy and declared that such policies would inevitably lead to "anarchy".

[13] Following the Parliamentarian victory in the Second English Civil War, the removal of dissenting voices from the House of Commons and the execution of Charles I, power lay entirely in the hands of the Grandees of the New Model Army.

[15] The Diggers believed in creating an egalitarian society of small agrarian communities and put this into practice by occupying a number of tracts of common land for the purposes of farming it, but these settlements were eventually suppressed by the authorities of the Commonwealth.

The eventual spread of the Age of Enlightenment to Britain and the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution brought about a number of changes to the country, which allowed for the early conception of a formalized anarchist philosophy.

This led Locke to propose the formation of a social contract between the British people and their government, which would have the power make laws and protect the institution of private property.

[19] In Book IV, Swift writes of the Houyhnhnms, an intelligent race of horses that believed society could govern itself sufficiently through reason and lived in a kind of primitive communism.

[23] When looking at the dominant forms of government, Burke found democracy to be more preferable to despotism and aristocracy, but still considered it lacking, calling for a complete rejection of church and state, and the reclamation of "perfect liberty".

[24] Burke would later turn towards conservatism and disown his Vindication, claiming it to be a satire of the parliamentary opposition leader Henry St John, but the text still went on to inspire the anarchist philosophy of William Godwin and the libertarian socialism of George Holyoake.

[25] With the outbreak of the American Revolution, one thinker that rose to prominence was the radical Thomas Paine, who issued calls for women's rights, the abolition of slavery and the prevention of cruelty to animals.

In 1776, Paine's pamphlet Common Sense drew considerable attention, with its calls for independence of the Thirteen Colonies and a people's war against the British Empire, in the hope that America could inspire future revolutions abroad.

[25] In this work, Burke espoused a traditionalist conservative view of government, cautioning against radical changes to its functioning, which he believed would transfer power from the clergy and nobility to the "swinish multitude.

He asserted that all order stemmed from human nature, itself fundamentally good but corrupted by established governments, and that individuals were chiefly regulated by their own common interest, rather than by legal codes.

His son-in-law Percy Bysshe Shelley became a widely-renowned poet, putting much of Godwin's anarchist philosophy into verse, while his disciple Robert Owen went on to become the founding father of British socialism.

Following his death, Political Justice continued to inspire the Chartists and Owenites, who published new editions of the book, as well as the Ricardian socialism of Thomas Hodgskin and William Thompson, which in turn influenced the Marxist theory of the "withering away of the state".

The LEL quickly gained support for its libertarian socialist platform from the workers of London's East End, declaring themselves against all forms of government, before they merged into the Social Democratic Federation (SDF).

[42] Anarchist tendencies also worked their way into the popular literature of the time, with William Morris' News from Nowhere depicting a utopian society and Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism espousing the importance of individualism, while libertarian ideas were likewise defended by authors such as George Bernard Shaw, Edward Carpenter and Henry Stephens Salt.

[50][51] Over the years the Freedom editorial group included Jack Robinson, Pete Turner, Colin Ward, Nicolas Walter, Alan Albon, John Rety, Nino Staffa, Dave Mansell, Gillian Fleming, Mary Canipa, Philip Sansom, Arthur Moyse and numerous others.

[56] On the last day of July 1964 an 18-year-old Stuart Christie departed London for Paris, where he picked up plastic explosives from the anarchist organisation Defensa Interior,[57] and then Madrid on a mission to kill General Francisco Franco.

After his release he continued his activism in the anarchist movement in the United Kingdom, re-formed the Anarchist Black Cross and Black Flag with Albert Meltzer, was acquitted of involvement with the Angry Brigade, and started the publishing house Cienfuegos Press (later Refract Publications), which for a number of years he operated from the remote island of Sanday, Orkney, where he also edited and published a local Orcadian newspaper, The Free-Winged Eagle.