[1] P. Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, London, 1908, pp. 255–6.

[2] Club and Institute MS appeal, dated January 1873; quoted in John Taylor, Self Help to Glamour: The Working Men’s Clubs, 1860–1972, History Workshop Pamphlet No 7, London, 1972.

[3] John Taylor, op. cit.

[4] Quoted in John Taylor, op. cit.

[5] The biographical information on Kitz is taken from his ‘Recollections and Reflections’, in Freedom, January–July 1912, and also from Stan Shipley, Club Life and Socialism in Mid-Victorian London, History Workshop Pamphlet No. 5, London, 1972.

[6] Quotes to this point from Freedom, January 1912. For the ex-members of the British Federation of the First International he mentions, see Documents of the First International, London/Moscow, 1964. Of particular interest is George Harris, who was viewed with suspicion by Marx because of his contacts with anarchists and others involved with the unorthodox Section 12 of the International in New York.

[7] Shipley, op. cit.

[8] Freedom, February 1912.

[9] Andreas Scheu, Unsturzheime, quoted in E. P. Thompson, William Morris, London, 1955, p. 319.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., Principles of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and of the Social Democrats of America were published in English in 1877. They were reprinted in the pamphlet published by Sketchley in 1879.

[12] A most detailed source on the German anarchist movement is Andrew R. Carlson, German Anarchism, Metuchen, New Jersey, 1972.

[13] P. Kropotkin, The Spirit of Revolt, translated by D.J. Nicoll, Sheffield, 1898.

[14] Carlson, op. cit., p. 143.

[15] Freedom, April 1897.

[16] Letter, Marx to F. A. Sorge, 5^th November 1880.

[17] Freedom, March 1912.

[18] See the English-language Freiheit, 24^th April 1881, and John E. Williams and the Early History of the S.D.F., London, 1886.

[19] MS autobiography of Ambrose Barker, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, kindly lent to me by Stan Shipley.

[20] Mat Kavanagh in War Commentary, 5^th May 1945. Lane himself says both that he arrived in London ‘around 1867’ and that he saw the railings pulled down in the Reform Riots.

[21] From verbal reminiscences of Ambrose Barker to E.P. Thompson. See the latter’s William Morris, p. 325.

[22] John Lord was the treasurer of the Freiheit Defense Committee. The minutes of the International Conference are given in Nettlau, Anarchisten und Sozial-Revolutionäre, Berlin, 1931.

[23] Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist, p. 411.

[24] Shipley, op. cit., pp. 34–5.

[25] Ambrose Barker, MS, see Chaper 1, note 18.

[26] Shipley, op. cit., p. 36, footnote.

[27] Joe Lane was involved with the production of the Radical.

[28] Justice, 11^th July 1896.

[29] Freedom, February 1912.

[30] H.W. Lee and E. Archbold, Social Democracy in Britain, London, 1935, p. 50.

[31] Joe Lane, various memoirs, International Institute of Social History, (I.I.S.H.) Amsterdam. Punctuation added.

[32] Mat Kavanagh, War Commentary, 5^th May 1945.

[33] Lane memoirs.

[34] Lee and Archbold, op. cit., p. 50.

[35] Frank Kitz, Freedom, April 1912. Following quotes from Kitz from same source.

[36] Lane memoirs. Subsequent Lane quotes from same source.

[37] Lee and Archbold, op. cit., p. 44.

[38] Ibid., p. 42.

[39] Marx, letter of 11^th April 1881.

[40] Marx to Sorge, letter of 15^th December 1881, op. cit., p. 397.

[41] Lee and Archbold, op. cit., p. 51. The stepping-stone program remained the only program of the Federation until the surprises of the 1884 conference.

[42] See quote in Thompson, op. cit., p. 344.

[43] See Marx to Sorge, letter of 5^th November 1880, ‘In any event Most has performed the good service of having brought together all the ranters — Andreas Scheu, Hasselman — as a group.’

[44] See Thompson, op. cit., and Carlson, op. cit.

[45] Quoted in Thompson, op. cit., p. 321.

[46] Thompson, op. cit, p. 355.

[47] Engels to Sorge, letter of 29^th April 1886.

[48] William Morris, ‘How I Became a Socialist’, Justice, 16^th June 1894.

[49] Answer to a question at a meeting, quoted by J.B. Glasier, William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement, London, 1921, pp. 21–2.

[50] Two examples are Edward Aveling in London and Thomas Barclay in Leicester.

[51] Lee and Archbold, op. cit., p. 58.

[52] Ibid., p. 57.

[53] Manifesto reproduced in Bulletin of Society for Study of Labor History, No. 14, Spring 1967.

[54] Quoted in Thompson, op. cit., p. 396.

[55] Letters of William Morris, Philip Henderson (ed.), London, 1950, pp. 203–4.

[56] Lane memoirs. Punctuation added.

[57] Lane is here referring to the ‘stepping stones’. See note 7.

[58] E.P. Thompson argues this case persuasively.

[59] The letter was written after the conference and the first meeting of the new council.

[60] See Thompson, op. cit., p. 448, for Engels’s activities here.

[61] Frank Kitz, Freedom, April 1912.

[62] Quoted in Thompson, op. cit., p. 444.

[63] Letter, Lane to Barker.

[64] Lane memoirs.

[65] Mile End, Stratford and Hoxton branches; material in Socialist League archive, I.I.S.H.

[66] MS minutes, S.L. archive.

[67] Garrett, Man in the Street, London, p. 141. My thanks to Anna Davin for this reference.

[68] P. Latouche, Anarchy!, London, 1908, p. 78.

[69] Club and Institute Journal, 17^th July 1886.

[70] William Morris, Commonweal, 31^st July 1886.

[71] Latouche, op. cit., pp. 46–7.

[72] See movement of unemployment figures in Chronology.

[73] See e.g. Liberty, 25^th August 1883.

[74] For more detail see A. Calder-Marshall, Lewd, Blasphemous and Obscene, London, 1972, pp. 181–2.

[75] National Reformer, September 1884, quoted in Liberty, 3^rd January 1885.

[76] Fabian Tract 41, London, 1892.

[77] Anarchist, August 1885.

[78] Mat Kavanagh, biographical sketch of James Harrigan, War Commentary, 24^th February 1945.

[79] Anarchist, 15^th October 1885.

[80] Anarchist, 9^th December 1885.

[81] Quoted in the Anarchist, March 1886.

[82] See G. Woodcock and I. Avacumovic, The Anarchist Prince, London, 1950, p. 203ff.

[83] Ibid.

[84] From Stepniak’s Underground Russia, quoted in the Anarchist, September 1885.

[85] Anarchist, 1^st January 1886.

[86] Anarchist, 20^th April 1886.

[87] See letter, C. M Wilson to Marsh, Marsh papers, I.I.S.H.

[88] See C.M Wilson to Sparling, 7^th March 1886, S.L. archive, and the Anarchist, June 1886.

[89] Quoted in the Anarchist, June 1886.

[90] Letter, C.M. Wilson to Sparling, 29^th June 1886, S.L. archive.

[91] See Carlson, op. cit.

[92] Letter from Reuss to S.L. council, 3^rd July 1886, S.L. archive, and letter from H. Charles to the Anarchist, October 1886.

[93] Woodcock and Avacumovic, The Anarchist Prince, London, 1950, p. 205.

[94] This is an accurate account taken from Nicolas Walter’s biographical sketch in the Match, November 1973.

[95] H.W. Nevinson, Fire of Life, London, 1935, p. 52.

[96] J.W. Hulse, Revolutionists in London, Oxford 1970, p. 91.

[97] See letters of F.C. Slaughter (F. Charles) and C.M. Wilson, S.L. archive.

[98] Engels to Sorge, 29^th April 1886.

[99] Quoted in the Commune, November 1926.

[100] Commonweal, D. Nicoll (ed.), 3^rd October 1903.

[101] Frank Kitz, Freedom, May 1912.

[102] Quoted in A. Freemantle, This Little Band of Prophets, New York, 1960, p. 158.

[103] Anarchist, Sheffield, August 1895. From an article written on the death of Dan Chatterton.

[104] Mat Kavanagh, biographical sketch of Dan Chatterton, War Commentary, 24^th February 1945.

[105] The draft proposals of the Avelings. See Chapter 3.

[106] Morris to Jane Morris, 15^th June 1886, Letters.

[107] D128-131, S.L. archive.

[108] Letter written summer 1887, Letters.

[109] Engels to Sorge, 29^th April 1886.

[110] Motion by Donald, 20^th September 1886, S.L. archive.

[111] See letter of Morris to J. B. Glasier, 1^st December 1886.

[112] Binning to S.L. council, 3^rd June 1886. S.L. archive.

[113] Circular ‘To members of the Socialist League’, F173, S.L. archive.

[114] MS minutes, S.L. archive.

[115] Report of Norwich branch to 1887 conference, S.L. archive.

[116] Freedom, November 1887.

[117] Commonweal, 10^th March 1888.

[118] Freedom, November 1887.

[119] Lane memoirs.

[120] Morris in Commonweal, 19^th November 1887.

[121] Cunninghame Graham, Commonweal, 10^th November 1888.

[122] Freedom, January 1888.

[123] Internal circular of 1887, F173, S.L. archive.

[124] Weekly letters, D95-100, S.L. archive.

[125] This is probably the significance of the ‘missionary fund’ made up of money collected at public meetings, etc., by members of the Bloomsbury branch. According to practice this was to be handed into the office for Commonweal expenses, etc., although with council permission — which seems to have been given freely enough — branches could use such money for local propaganda. The Bloomsbury branch, however, didn’t hand in their money, refused to account for it and were rude about it when asked. A motion condemning them for this was notified in the internal letter for 4^th July 1887. The probable use of the money was for ‘working the provincial branch’ on behalf of the parliamentarians.

[126] ‘To the members of the Socialist League’, F174, S.L. archive.

[127] Nor were the anti-parliamentarians above a bit of misrepresentation: the Hackney branch claimed eighteen members in the conference minutes; yet Secretary Cores’s membership list reveals only eleven names.

[128] Hackney branch circular, 1888, 1533, S.L. archive.

[129] Report of Bloomsbury branch, B43, S.L. archive.

[130] Mandates of Bloomsbury delegates, B36, S.L. archive.

[131] Morris to Glasier, 1888, Letters.

[132] Ibid.

[133] MS notes of a conversation with Ferd Charles, I.I.S.H.

[134] Morris to Glasier, 15^th December 1888, Letters.

[135] Freedom, July 1912.

[136] Freedom, May 1888.

[137] Morris to Glasier, 27^th July 1888, Letters.

[138] Glasier, op. cit.

[139] Commonweal, 18^th May 1889.

[140] Freedom, October 1889.

[141] Commonweal, 31^st August 1889.

[142] Commonweal, 7^th September 1889.

[143] Freedom, October 1907.

[144] Freedom, October 1889.

[145] Commonweal, 7^th September 1889.

[146] Debate at the Patriotic Club, Sunday, 25^th August 1889. From Freedom of September 1889. The word ‘expropriation’ has a special meaning here. Kropotkin’s pamphlet of that name had been published by Seymour in English in 1886. It visualizes the progress of the revolution where the people “As soon as they have made a clean sweep of the Government … will seek first of all to ensure to themselves decent dwellings and sufficient food and clothes.” But in order to ensure no return of previous exploitation, expropriation “must apply to everything that enables any man — be he financier, mill owner or landlord — to appropriate the product of another’s toil.” Essentially expropriation is the process of communalizing property and capital.

[147] Commonweal, 9^th November 1889.

[148] Handbill in Nettlau Collection, I.I.S.H.

[149] Commonweal, 30^th August 1890.

[150] Latouche, op. cit., p. 6o.

[151] J.R. Clynes, Memoirs, London, 1937, pp. 53–4.

[152] Commonweal, 16^th August 1890.

[153] Morris to Glasier, 6^th April 1890, Letters.

[154] Commonweal, 12^th July 1890.

[155] Morris to Nicoll, 19^th July 1890, Letters.

[156] Freedom, July 1912.

[157] Commonweal, 22^nd November 1890.

[158] Commonweal, 15^th November 1890.

[159] Commonweal, 23^rd May 1891.

[160] Commonweal, 29^th November 1890.

[161] Morris to Glasier, 5^th December 1890, Letters.

[162] Commonweal, 5^th April 1890.

[163] Commonweal, April 1891.

[164] Commonweal, Nicoll (ed.), Christmas 1904.

[165] Belfast Weekly Star, quoted in Commonweal, March 1891.

[166] See for example handbill headed ‘MURDER’ in W.C. Hart, Confessions of an Anarchist, London, 1906, p. 42.

[167] Reynold’s News, 14^th April 1895.

[168] Times, 16^th January 1892.

[169] I.e. at the Socialist congresses held in Paris that year.

[170] This was, in all pedantry, a mistake. The letter was signed ‘Degnai’.

[171] Times, 22^nd January 1892.

[172] Anarchist, Sheffield, Vol. 2, No. 8, 1895.

[173] Commonweal, No. II, May 1898.

[174] See S.L. archive, K1137, 1138.

[175] D.J. Nicoll, The Walsall Anarchists, London, 1894.

[176] J.C. Longoni, Four Patients of Dr. Deibler, London, 1970, p. 16.

[177] He arrived in mid-1890.

[178] Commonweal, 21^st May 1892.

[179] Letters K1239-1240, S.L. archive. See also Deakin’s confession.

[180] Ted Leggatt, letter to Reynold’s News, 21^st April 1895. See also article by P. McIntyre, Reynold’s News, 14^th April 1895, and Edward Carpenter, My Days and Dreams, London, 1916.

[181] Anarchist (Sheffield), Vol. 2, No. 20, 1895.

[182] D.J. Nicoll, op.cit.

[183] In the Brotherton Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

[184] Commonweal, 24^th October 1891.

[185] Commonweal, 5^th December 1891.

[186] Whom I suspect, on very little evidence, to have been the young Billy McQueen.

[187] This would appear to be Cyril Bell.

[188] Shop Assistant, 30^th August 1924.

[189] Times, 17^th October 1891.

[190] Times, 1^st January 1892. See H.S. Salt’s introduction to Selected Poems of J.E. Barlas, London 1925, for some biographical details. He had been “batoned and floored” on Bloody Sunday and had been a member of both the S.D.F. and the Socialist League.

[191] W.M. Thompson was also the editor of Reynold’s News.

[192] Birmingham Daily Post, 10^th February 1892.

[193] A notice warning about his activities had appeared in Justice the previous year, on 18^th April 1891.

[194] Justice, 5^th November 1892.

[195] L’Internationale, which was distributed in England by Coulon.

[196] Commonweal, No. II, 15^th May 1898, and Good Friday 1909.

[197] See Longoni, op. cit.

[198] Times, 29^th March 1892.

[199] Times, 4^th April 1892.

[200] It changed little for the Walsall defendants that this later turned out to be a plot got up by a highly professional agent provocateur. See Central News telegram of 21^st April, quoted Freedom, May 1892.

[201] Freedom, May 1892.

[202] Times, 5^th April 1892.

[203] The Chief Inspector was Colonel Majendie who gave evidence at this and other anarchist trials for the prosecution.

[204] Justice, 9^th April 1892.

[205] Leaflet in Nettlau Collection.

[206] A. Coulon, Anarchy is Too True a Doctrine …, British Museum.

[207] Anarchist (Sheffield), Vol. 2, No. 20, 1895.

[208] Edward Carpenter to Alf Mattison, 7^th April 1892. Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library.

[209] Anarchist (Sheffield), Vol. 2, No. 20, 1895.

[210] Nicoll, Anarchy at the Bar, London, 1894. The ‘dear friend’ is Ferd Charles.

[211] See St James’s Gazette, 9^th April 1892.

[212] Anarchist (Sheffield), Vol. 2, No. 20, 1895.

[213] The headquarters were at 7 Lamb’s Conduit Street, W.C.1. “This is the only Society in the United Kingdom,” they announced, “founded on TRUE cooperative principles: Self-employment by the workers; Eight Hours Day; TU wages the minimum pay; No Interest to Shareholders; No Dividend Grabbing; Sweaters boycotted.” People’s Press, 24^th January 1891.

[214] Anarchist (Sheffield), Vol. 2, No. 20.

[215] Nicoll, Anarchy at the Bar.

[216] Anarchist (Sheffield), Vol. 2, No. 20.

[217] Anarchist (Sheffield), Vol. 2, No. 21.

[218] W.C. Hart, op. cit., p. 45.

[219] Reynold’s News, 7^th April 1895.

[220] Anarchist (Sheffield ), Vol. 2, No. 21, 1895.

[221] Times, 25^th April 1892.

[222] Anarchist, 20^th April 1886.

[223] Commonweal, 30^th April 1892.

[224] J. Sweeny, At Scotland Yard, London, 1905.

[225] Times, 2^nd May 1892.

[226] Times, 7^th May 1892.

[227] Nicoll, Anarchy at the Bar.

[228] This is quite literally true. Some of the documents had disappeared by the time Nicoll was released.

[229] Times, 7^th May 1892.

[230] Published Sheffield, 1897.

[231] Commonweal, Christmas 1904.

[232] See the series of articles in the Evening News, London, December 1894, particularly 18^th and 19^th of that month.

[233] See Chronology.

[234] Commonweal, Christmas 1904.

[235] See S.L. archive K2628, and Labor Annual, 1896.

[236] Nicoll, The Greenwich Mystery, Sheffield, 1897.

[237] Freedom, June 1893.

[238] Times, 28^th January 1893. The two men at the back of the court were George Cores and Billy MacQueen. The account in Freedom, March 1893, makes it quite clear that they were rather severely beaten up by the police.

[239] Nicoll, The Greenwich Mystery, and Commonweal, 1^st May 1893.

[240] See account of a meeting addressed by Tochatti in the Italian quarter in Commonweal, 25^th June 1893.

[241] See e.g. W.C. Hart, Commonweal, 13^th May 1893. Also later reports from Hart in Freedom and other examples in the present book.

[242] Islington Gazette, 3^rd July 1893.

[243] Commonweal, 8^th July 1893.

[244] Quoted from the press of 21^st September in Commonweal, 30^th September.

[245] Commonweal, 28^th October 1893.

[246] See Commonweal, 14^th October 1893 to 20^th January 1894.

[247] Times, 9^th November 1893. Freedom later asserted that the bomb had exploded prematurely, killing the person carrying it who was waiting for the opportunity to hurl it at Marshal Campos, who had massacred peasants at Xeres. Pallas had already made one attempt on Campos’s life and had been executed.

[248] Morning Leader, 12^th November 1893, quoted in Nicoll, The Greenwich Mystery.

[249] Times, 13^th November 1893.

[250] Commonweal, 25^th November 1893.

[251] Trafalgar Square had been reopened for meetings by the Liberal government elected in 1892, doubtless as a result of Radical pressure, to the accompaniment of rhetorical flourishes. To close the square must have taken some pressure with these on record.

[252] Freedom, January/February 1894.

[253] Times, 18^th December 1893.

[254] Commonweal, 23^rd December 1893.

[255] Commonweal, 31^st March 1894.

[256] Times, 5^th January 1894.

[257] Sweeny, op. cit., pp. 208–9.

[258] Commonweal, 30^th September 1893.

[259] See agenda in Commonweal, 25^th November 1893.

[260] Commonweal, Christmas 1904; Nicoll, The Greenwich Mystery; Nicoll to Nettlau, letters in Nettlau Collection.

[261] Commonweal, Christmas 1904.

[262] Letter to Nicoll by L.S. Bevington, quoted in Nicoll, Letters from the Dead, London, 1898.

[263] Labor Annual, 1896. His subsequent political career did not live up to this early promise: suspected of dabbling in explosives “he was forbidden to hold office or lecture for a year with the result that the Kilburn branch changed its name and refused to be deprived of his services.” See P. Thompson, Socialists, Liberals and Labor, London, 1967, pp. 160–62.

[264] This incident inspired Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent, which, however, bears little resemblance to the real events. See Norman Sherry, Conrad’s Western World, London, 1971, which is both good reading and a more or less accurate unraveling of Conrad’s sources.

[265] L.S. Bevington to Nicoll, Letters from the Dead.

[266] Greenwich Mystery.

[267] See Central News report in the Times, 16^th February 1894. The Central News was a news agency which, interestingly enough, had employed Reuss, the German police spy, at one time.

[268] “Walsh, the big bully of the force, a ruffian noted for his savage attacks on little boys and blind men.” Commonweal, No. III, July 1898.

[269] Times, 17^th February 1894.

[270] ‘Death to Carnot!’ — Carnot was the President of France. He had refused to commute Vaillant’s death sentence. The placard is interesting taken together with an account of a London anarchist meeting described in Figaro, 7^th February 1894, where speakers asserted that bombs killed the innocent as well as the guilty and advocated the use of the knife or gun. It was apparently a general sentiment — an anarchist, Santo Caserio, assassinated Carnot four months later, with a dagger.

[271] The house at 30 Fitzroy Street had already been lived in by François, whom the French police had extradited for the Café Very bombing. Fritz Brall had also lived there.

[272] “According to a reporter of the Press Association”: Nicoll, The Greenwich Mystery.

[273] Quoted ibid.

[274] Ibid. Coulon, however, depended rather heavily on self-advertisement for his reputation as a Scourge of Anarchy and need not be assumed to be telling the truth.

[275] Times, 20^th February 1894.

[276] Ibid.

[277] Times, 24^th February 1894.

[278] ‘Dynamitism’, in Commonweal, 24^th June 1893.

[279] Commonweal, 13^th April 1894.

[280] Ibid. Also Freedom, April i894.

[281] Freedom, May 1894.

[282] Ibid.

[283] See Liberty, May 1894; Commonweal, 13^th April 1894; Freedom, May 1894.

[284] See the Times, 4^th and 5^th May; also Commonweal, 17^th November 1907 — at which time Farnara was still in Dartmoor.

[285] Times, 2^nd and 19^th June 1894. The words ‘dynamite guide’ seem to be a bit of poetic license: the pamphlet’s German title is Revolutionäre Kriegwissenschaft, or Revolutionary Warfare.

[286] Hart, op. cit., pp. 20–1.

[287] Latouche, op. cit., pp. 133–4.

[288] In Collection of Anarchist Placards in French, British Museum. Many are given as originating from the ‘Imprimerie Anarchiste, Londres’. Date from Glasier, op. cit., p. 126, who says the leaflet was issued by the Autonomie Club.

[289] Glasier; op. cit., p. 126.

[290] Hart, op. cit., pp. 2 and 13.

[291] Max Nomad, Dreamers, Dynamiters and Demagogues, New York, 1964.

[292] See documents in Nettlau Collection.

[293] Nicoll, Letters from the Dead.

[294] Nicoll, The Greenwich Mystery.

[295] A reference, one supposes, to creatures like Reuss and McCormack who made a bit extra from journalism to supplement their regular retainers as spies.

[296] Nicoll, The Greenwich Mystery. ‘Isobel Meredith’ (Olivia Rossetti) gives a more dynamic fictional account in her novel A Girl Among the Anarchists, London, 1903.

[297] Commonweal meetings were on the Tuesday before the paper came out on a Saturday. Thus, according to Nicoll, Samuels had been first accused two weeks before Tuesday, 5^th June, i.e. 22^nd May.

[298] Nicoll, Letters from the Dead.

[299] Hart, op. cit., p. 45.

[300] Account of events and trial from Freedom, August 1894; Times, 2^nd, 5^th, 10^th, 17^th, 21^st June, 1^st August.

[301] Commonweal, 15^th May 1898.

[302] Nicoll to Nettlau, letters in Nettlau Collection.

[303] Commonweal, Christmas 1904.

[304] Nicoll, Letters from the Dead.

[305] Ibid.

[306] Commonweal, 20^th June 1897.

[307] Nicoll, Letters from the Dead.

[308] Anarchist (Sheffield), 26^th August 1894.

[309] Quoted in Commonweal, 8^th August 1907.

[310] Commonweal, 20^th June 1897.

[311] Islington Gazette, 22^nd August 1893.

[312] A letter from Tom Maguire quoted in E. Carpenter’s introduction to Tom Maguire, A Remembrance, Manchester, 1895.

[313] Blair-Smith in the Anarchist (Sheffield), 18^th March 1894.

[314] Times, 8^th August 1894.

[315] Weekly Times and Echo, 3^rd December 1893.

[316] Evening News, 17^th December 1894. Article by Zitrik (pseudonymous).

[317] H.W. Nevinson, op. cit., p. 53.

[318] Latouche, op. cit.

[319] Quoted in Max Nomad, Apostles of Revolution, New York, 1961, p. 298.

[320] Max Beer, History of British Socialism, London, 1940; also S.D.F. Conference Report, 1895.

[321] Justice, 7^th May 1892.

[322] Commonweal, 12^th June 1898.

[323] For the details see Reynold’s News, 19^th May 1895.

[324] Reynold’s News, 14^th April 1895.

[325] Anarchist (Sheffield), Vol. 2, No. 18, 1895.

[326] Anarchist (Sheffield), Vol. 2, No. 19, 1895.

[327] See paragraph or so on current activities at the beginning of Nicoll, The Ghosts of Chelmsford Jail, Sheffield, 1897.

[328] See article by Henry Seymour, Liberty, October 1895.

[329] In a letter to Liberty, January 1896.

[330] Byrne to Stapleton of the Canning Town Group for general circulation, August 1896. Nettlau Collection.

[331] Hart, op. cit., Chapter XIV.

[332] Liberty, October 1895.

[333] See letters from Byrne, Nettlau and O. Rossetti in Nettlau Collection.

[334] Quinn to Freedom, 10 November 1896. Nettlau Collection.

[335] Banham and Reece to Freedom, 12^th December 1896. Nettlau Collection.

[336] Hart, op. cit., p. 86.

[337] Marsh to Nettlau, 3^rd October 1897. Nettlau Collection.

[338] Marsh to Nettlau, 25^th November 1897. Nettlau Collection.

[339] Nettlau to Nicoll, 29^th April 1897. Reprinted in Commonweal, 20^th June 1897.

[340] Nicoll to Nettlau, n.d., I.I.S.H.

[341] Marsh to Nettlau, 29^th June 1897. Nettlau Collection.

[342] See leaflets in I.I.S.H.

[343] Nettlau Collection.

[344] Commonweal, 15^th May 1898.

[345] Later issues of his Commonweal, which continued until 1907 with gaps of up to a year between each issue, are evidence of an unfolding, almost classic, paranoid condition. The truth of socialism becomes the property of a kind of masonry of which Nicoll was one of the few members. William Morris became Solomon’s architect Hiram, with whom the secret of the building of the great Temple died. His death had been caused by a conspiracy which at first involved Samuels, MacDonald and Turner, but which was then expanded to reveal a vast homosexual/Jesuit/reactionary conspiracy involving the Catholic Church in general and people such as Charlotte Wilson, Edward Carpenter and Keir Hardie in particular.

[346] Freedom, January 1898.

[347] Kropotkin to Marsh, 30^th December 1897, Marsh archive, I.I.S.H.

[348] Freedom, February 1898.

[349] Ibid.

[350] See M. Nomad, Dreamers, Dynamiters and Demagogues, New York, 1964.

[351] In Calder-Marshall, op. cit.

[352] Sweeny, op. cit., p. 186.

[353] Commonweal, July 1898.

[354] Freedom, December 1898.

[355] Freedom, October 1899.

[356] Freedom, January/February 1900.

[357] Freedom, September/October, 1900.

[358] See Rudolph Rocker’s account in his The London Years, London, 1956.

[359] Freedom, September/October, 1900.

[360] Freedom, July 1901.

[361] Freedom, December 1901.

[362] MS in Nettlau Collection. Published in Freedom in bowdlerized form.

[363] Kropotkin to Marsh. Both letters in Marsh archive.

[364] Coates, K. and Topham, T., Workers’ Control, London, 1970, p. xxxii.

[365] Labor Annual, 1898, p. 88.

[366] See Alan Fox, A History of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, Oxford, 1958. Cooperatives were set up on a branch basis, though with but modest success. See pp. 181–5. Some of these productive co-ops were long-lived however: “of the 42 cooperative production societies composing the Cooperative Production Federation in 1950, 16 were footwear societies” (p. 637).

[367] Labor Annual for each year. Either the editors became bored or the decline was catastrophic because no mention is made of colonies in succeeding issues.

[368] First published in London in 1899.

[369] Reprinted in Liberty, March 1895.

[370] Hart, op. cit., p. 79.

[371] Hart, op. cit., pp. 79–81, says some £1,200.

[372] Labor Annual, 1900.

[373] Hart, op. cit., p. 81.

[374] Latouche, op. cit., pp. 136–8.

[375] And some like Lilian Wolfe who bounced back to invigorate the movement for years.

[376] The Labor Annual for 1900 reported it as being “not yet self-sufficient.” Members included Norman St John and J.C. Kenworthy.

[377] Labor Annual, 1900.

[378] Freedom, February 1898.

[379] See Yann Cloare and Georges Darien, L’ Ennemi du peuple, Paris, 1972, p. 88.

[380] Justice, 6^th June 1891.

[381] Freedom, May 1889.

[382] Commonweal, 30^th September 1893.

[383] Commonweal, 6^th January 1894.

[384] Commonweal, 20^th January 1894.

[385] See letter from O.G., Commonweal, 17^th February 1894.

[386] Commonweal, 25^th November 1893; also Alan Fox, op. cit., pp. 185–6.

[387] Adolphe Smith, A Critical Essay on the International Congress, London, 1889.

[388] Liberty, January 1896. See also Eleanor Marx Aveling’s introduction to a translation of Plekhanov’s Socialism and Anarchism, published in 1896 for a smearing attack on the anarchists designed to bolster the campaign to keep them out of the congress.

[389] Freedom, August/September 1896.

[390] E.g, ‘New Tactics in the Economic Struggle’, Freedom, February 1898.

[391] Freedom, August 1900.

[392] See ‘Methods of Propaganda’, Freedom, July 1901.

[393] Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain, London, 1969, gives more details of these developments.

[394] Freedom, August 1903.

[395] Freedom, August 1904.

[396] Freedom, October 1904.

[397] Freedom, June 1906.

[398] Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait!, published in approximately monthly parts from 1956 onwards.

[399] Aldred, Dogmas Discarded, II, p. 39.

[400] Though for the militants who survived into the syndicalist period it represented a body of memories and inspiration of extraordinary power. John Turner, Frank Kitz, Sam Mainwaring, Ambrose Barker, in various snippets of autobiography, all pay eloquent testimony to the education they received in the League.

[401] Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait!, Vol. 2, No. 1, p. 303.

[402] For the East End Jewish movement see W.J. Fishman, East End Jewish Radicals, London, 1975.

[403] Voice of Labor, Vol. 1, No. 4, 9^th February 1907.

[404] For the most detailed accounts of his union career see The Shop Assistant, 19^th October 1912 and 30^th August 1924.

[405] P. Thompson, op. cit., p. 59.

[406] See the section entitled ‘The Treachery of Officials’ in E.J.B. Allen, Revolutionary Unionism, Huddersfield, 1909.

[407] Industrialist, November 1909.

[408] Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait!, Vol. 2, No. 1.

[409] Voice of Labor, 29^th July 1907.

[410] Aldred, No Traitor’s Gait!, Vol. 2, No. 1.

[411] Herald of Revolt, June 1912.

[412] For details see Rex v. Aldred, by the latter, Glasgow, 1948.

[413] Freedom, August 1908.

[414] Freedom, October 1908.

[415] Industrialist, June 1908.

[416] Industrialist, July 1909.

[417] Industrialist, November 1908.

[418] Freedom, December 1908. E.J.B. Allen was later expelled from the Industrialist League for taking part in the election campaign for Victor Grayson in Colne Valley. (Industrialist League Executive minutes, 9^th October 1916.) He then joined Tom Mann’s Industrial Syndicalist Education League.

[419] See W.W. Craik, Central Labor College, London, 1964, pp. 82, 90, 95–6. Craik claims that S.L.P. attempts to recruit at Ruskin were a failure. He was there at the time. Tom Bell, who claims otherwise, was not.

[420] See Chronology.

[421] Quoted in Geoff Brown’s introduction to reprint of Industrial Syndicalist, London, 1974.

[422] Freedom, October 1910.

[423] Industrial Syndicalist, January 1911.

[424] Herald of Revolt, May 1912.

[425] G.R. Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes, London, 1920, p. 150.

[426] P. Gibbs, Pageant of the Years, London, 1946, p. 180.

[427] Freedom, September 1911.

[428] P. Gibbs, loc. cit.

[429] Freedom, September 1911.

[430] Herald of Revolt, September 1911.

[431] Freedom, January 1912.

[432] See J.W. Major, Quayside Crooks, London, c. 1930, p. 51.

[433] Industrial Syndicalist, Vol. I, No. 6.

[434] Industrial Syndicalist, Vol. I, No. 1.

[435] Ibid.

[436] Reprinted by Pluto Press, London, 1973.

[437] Industrial Syndicalist, Vol. I, No. 3.

[438] H.A. Clegg, A. Fox and A. F. Thompson, A History of British Trades Unions, Vol. I, Oxford, 1964, p. 132.

[439] J.T. Murphy, New Horizons, London 1941, pp. 44, 45.

[440] Quoted in C.H. Stavenhagen, Industrial Unionism: Labor’s Final Weapon, London, probably 1917. (Second edition advertised February 1918.)

[441] See R.M. Fox, Smokey Crusade, London, 1937, p. 140.

[442] C. Arrow, Rogues and Others, London, 1926,Chapter XXII.

[443] E.g. John Paton; see below.

[444] Industrial Syndicalist, Vol. I, No. 6.

[445] Daily Herald, 20^th May 1912 and ff.

[446] Daily Telegraph, 20^th March 1912.

[447] Freedom, April 1912.

[448] Lane to Barker, 17^th December 1912, I.I.S.H.

[449] Lee and Archbold, op. cit., p. 183.

[450] Ibid., p. 185.

[451] W. Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain, London, 1969, p. 28.

[452] Ibid., p. 37 and footnote.

[453] J. Paton, Proletarian Pilgrimage, London, 1936, p. 206.

[454] Marsh to Keell, 21^st March 1912, I.I.S.H.

[455] Daily Dispatch, 24^th February 1912.

[456] Daily Dispatch, 26^th February 1912.

[457] Freedom, July 1912.

[458] G. Slocombe, The Tumult and the Shouting, London, 1936.

[459] Quoted in introduction to Barrett’s The First Person, London, 1963.

[460] Paton, op. cit., p. 119ff.

[461] Davison had made a lot of money working for Kodak. In addition to supporting the Central Labor College, the Anarchist and other things mentioned in the text, he also supported W.F. Hay, a Syndicalist miner from Wales during a speaking tour of the northern coalfields.

[462] As note 40.

[463] Paton, op. cit., pp. 221 and 232.

[464] Freedom, October 1912.

[465] Freedom, April 1913.

[466] Leo Abse, Private Member, London, 1974.

[467] Dave Douglass, Pit Life in County Durham, Oxford, 1972, p. 68.

[468] Spur, June 1914.

[469] Herald of Revolt, July 1911, reprinted February 1913.

[470] R.M. Fox, op. cit., p. 184.

[471] Freedom, June 1910.

[472] William GaIlagher, Revolt on the Clyde, London, 1949, p. 18.

[473] Keell to Karl Walter, 17^th November 1936, reprinted University Libertarian, Nos. 7 and 8.

[474] See letters of Cores and Keell to Nettlau in I.I.S.H. One gives details of Cores’s denunciation of Keell in 1915.

[475] R.M. Fox, op. cit.

[476] GaIlagher, op. cit., p. 30.

[477] N.W. in Freedom, 25^th May 1974.

[478] P.S. Meacham to Nettlau, 29^th February 1928, I.I.S.H.

[479] Quoted in the introduction to British Labor and the Russian Revolution, London, n.d.

[480] Quoted in Kendall, op. cit., p. 163.

[481] B. Thompson, Queer People, London, 1922, p. 297.

[482] Freedom, February 1912.

[483] Solidarity, January 1919.

[484] Spur, September 1919.

[485] Spur, October 1919. The Workers’ Socialist Federation was Sylvia Pankhurst’s organization, grouped round the Workers’ Dreadnought. The Communist League was probably Aldred’s organization.

[486] Spur, May 1920.

[487] Quoted in Kendall, op. cit., p. 229, footnote.

[488] Ibid., p. 231.

[489] Spur, August 1920.

[490] A. Shadwell, Revolutionary Movement in Britain, London, 1921. Reprinted from the Times.

[491] Meacham to Nettlau, 1928, I.I.S.H.

[492] Emma Goldman, Living My Life, London; 1932, Vol. 2, pp. 963 and 968.

[493] Ibid., p. 972.

[494] Margaret Cole, Life of G.D.H. Cole, London, 1971, p. 160.

[495] Keen to Nettlau, 25^th August 1928, I.I.S.H.

[496] Black Flag, January/February 1975.

[497] In particular, see Richard Bach Jensen, The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism: An International History, 1878–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).

[498] James Kelsay, ‘Al-Qaida as a Muslim (Religio-Political) Movement Remarks on James L. Gelvin’s “Al-Qaeda and Anarchism: A Historian’s Reply to Terrorology”,’ Terrorism and Political Violence 20, no. 4 (2008): 601–5; Leonard Binder, ‘Comment on Gelvin’s Essay on Al-Qaeda and Anarchism’, Terrorism and Political Violence 20, no. 4 (2008): 582–88; George Esenwein, ‘Comments on James L. Gelvin’s “Al-Qaeda and Anarchism: A Historian’s Reply to Terrorology”,’ Terrorism and Political Violence 20, no. 4 (2008): 597–600.

[499] Jean Maitron, Histoire du Mouvement Anarchiste (1880–1914) (Paris: Maspero, 1975).

[500] Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Oakland: AK Press, 2005 [1995]).

[501] Davide Turcato, ‘Italian Anarchism as a Transnational Movement, 1885–1915’, International Review of Social History 52 (2007): 407–44.

[502] Davide Turcato, Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta’s Experiments with Revolution, 1889–1900 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

[503] Constance Bantman, ‘Jean Grave and French Anarchism: A Relational Approach (1870s–1914)’, International Review of Social History 62 (2017): 451–77; Constance Bantman, ‘Louise Michel’s London Years: A Political Reassessment (1890–1905)’, Women’s History Review 26 (2017): 994–1012.

[504] Candace Falk, Love, Anarchy and Emma Goldman: A Biography (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990 [1984]); Kathy Ferguson, Emma Goldman: Political Thinking in the Streets (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011); Clare Hemmings, Considering Emma Goldman: Feminist Political Ambivalence and the Imaginative Archive (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018).

[505] Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt, eds., Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870–1940: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution (Leiden, NL: Brill Academic Publishers, 2010).

[506] Peter Cole, David Struthers and Kenyon Zimmer, Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW (London: Pluto Press, 2017).

[507] Ole Birk Laursen, ‘Anarchist Anti-Imperialism: Guy Aldred and the Indian Revolutionary Movement, 1909–14’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 46 (2018): 286–303.

[508] Pietro Di Paola, The Knights Errant of Anarchy: London and the Italian Anarchist Diaspora (1880–1917) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013).

[509] Daniel Laqua, ‘Political Contestation and Internal Strife: Socialist and Anarchist German Newspapers in London, 1878–1910’, in The Foreign Political Press in Nineteenth-Century London: Politics from a Distance, ed. Constance Bantman and Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva (London: Bloomsbury, 2018).