As a soldier he subscribed to the anti-militarist anarchist newspaper War Commentary, and in 1945 Ward was called as a witness for the prosecution in the trial of the paper's editors, John Hewetson, Vernon Richards and Philip Sansom.

This is based upon the principle that, as Ward put it, "in small face-to-face groups, the bureaucratising and hierarchical tendencies inherent in organisations have least opportunity to develop".

[9] In contrast to many anarchist philosophers and practitioners, Ward holds that "anarchism in all its guises is an assertion of human dignity and responsibility.

In the same year, Ward contributed to Education Without Schools (edited by Peter Buckman) discussing 'the role of the state'.

He argued that "one significant role of the state in the national education systems of the world is to perpetuate social and economic injustice"".

In his earlier text, the more famous of the two, Colin Ward explores the creativity and uniqueness of children and how they cultivate 'the art of making the city work'.

His later text, The Child in the Country, inspired a number of social scientists, notably geographer Chris Philo (1992), to call for more attention to be paid to young people as a 'hidden' and marginalised group in society.