As the State’s machinery of repression ground slowly onwards, both the 10 March and 24 March 1945 issues of War Commentary, Freedom’s wartime newspaper, had extensive coverage of anarchists being sent to court, solidarity actions and continued police searches
~ Rob Ray ~
The headline case, following on from raids at the end of 1944 and at the beginning of 1945, was the prosecution of four editors of the paper. Doctor John Hewetson, printer Philip Sansom, Vernon Richards and Marie Louise Berneri had been hauled into court (in Sansom’s case for the second time), accused of inciting disaffection in the armed forces.
Magistrate Ivan Snell, known as London’s tallest lawyer and thought of as something of a liberal, at least for the bench at that time, heard from the prosecutor that the defendants, having laid out their position against the ruling class, government, Army and church, were urging the loyal British Tommy to “retain their weapons to enforce such opinions upon the rest of society.”
The key phrase cited by the prosecution, via investigating detective Whitehead, was cadged from a short article on the inside cover of the 25 November 1944 issue of the paper. Specifically the article ‘Workers Struggle in Belgium’ which stated: “We are emphatically on the other side, that of the armed workers. And we repeat again what we said in our last issue — hold on to your rifles!”
Four subscribers, including Colin Ward, were brought in for questioning *when asked whether they had felt “disaffected” as a result of reading the offending passage they said they were not), and the hearing was split into four parts – one early in the month, then on March 9th, March 16th and March 23rd before the full trial on 23 April. Bail was allowed, at the high price of £1,000 for Sansom (who had already previously been up in front of the beak), however two people who stepped forward to offer the bond were rebuffed after they refused to take the oath. (As an aside, the Communist Party’s Daily Worker, which also covered this event, were rather petty in disdaining the anarchists’ facial hair, describing the scene as one of “grumbling beards”).
The legal defence was technically led by lawyer Gerald Rutledge, but as described by Ward in his excellent short essay on the subject, the real legal eagle was serial embezzler Ernest Silverman, who brought in top legal talent to pitch the line that the Freedom Group were upstanding citizens who hadn’t disaffected anyone. Of equal interest however were activities outside the court system, which is the subject of today’s Radical Reprint.
The 24 March issue prominently lists the recently-formed Freedom Defence Committee, and its participants were a high-powered bunch:
Chairman: HERBERT READ (prominent art historian and philosopher)
Vice Chairmen: FENNER BROCKWAY (Socialist MP, famed pacifist and Spanish Civil War activist) & PATRICK FIGGIS (a well-known church socialist of the time)
Secretary: ETHEL MANNIN (visionary author)
Treasurer: S. WATSON TAYLOR (surrealist)
Their statement of intent notes:
“We appeal to all comrades end readers of War Commentary as well as to all who believe in the freedom of speech and publication to lend their financial support so that the work of the Committee may go forward. During these difficult years the four accused comrades have given all their energies to the cause of Freedom. The least we can do is to rally to their defence now that Authority has attacked them.”
And a front page piece talks about the efforts of anarchists in Glasgow. It’s worth noting that the city has had a long and impressive history of working class anarchism, with Clydeside anarchism being in many ways its own distinct strain in comparison to the rest of the movement in Britain. Having them on board certainly couldn’t have hurt, and it’s their description of the situation reproduced below:
GLASGOW CALLS ALL WORKERS
to defence of the four London Anarchists
The following statement about the four arrested comrades has been produced in leaflet form by our Glasgow comrades and has been distributed by the thousand amongst Glasgow and Clydeside workers.
Here’s to those who would read,
Here’s to those who would write,
But there’s not who are afraid,
The truth should be heard,
Than those whom the truth would indict.
~ Robert Burns.
WORKERS!
We call upon you to rally to the defence of our London comrades who are being charged with sedition. After the lessons of John McLean’s case in the last war, when this great champion of the workers’ cause who gave his all to educating the workers, was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on much the same charge, we call upon you, in your own interest, to take up the cause of the four comrades whose records in the class struggle we lay before you.
I. MARIE LOUISE BERNERI
Marie Louise Berneri was horn in Italy, but was forced to leave when her parents were hounded out of Italy by Mussolini because of their activity as Anarchists in the working class struggle against Fascism. Her father. Professor (Camillo) Berneri carried on the struggle in France, and served several terms of imprisonment for his defence of the workers. In 1936, the Spanish workers sent out their call of revolt, and Berneri was not found wanting. He Joined his Anarchist comrades in Spain and played a prominent part in the organisation of militias and fought himself on the front. He paid with his life for his militancy, being shot in 1937.
During the present war, Marie Louise Berneri’s mother was arrested in France in 1940 and handed over to the Italian government. She was imprisoned in Germany and Italy, but is now free, and is carrying on the workers’ struggle in Southern Italy.
After her father’ s death, Marie Louise Berneri came to England and acquired British nationality by marriage. She continued her activity with the Anarchists in producing the anti-fascist paper Spain and the World, helping Spanish refugees front the Civil War, and carrying on through the medium of Freedom Press her opposition to Capitalism, Fascism and Nazism. As is well known, the Anarchists have opposed the war from a working class standpoint as an imperialist war, warning the workers against Fascism at home.
VERNON RICHARDS.
Her husband, Vernon Richards, is well known in the work of Freedom Press. At the age of 18 he joined Camillo Berneri in the production of an Anarchist paper in Italian. When the Spanish Revolution broke out in 1936, when he was 20, he founded Spain and the World and edited it throughout the war, explaining to the workers in this country the significance of the Spanish Anarchists’ struggle. At the same time he helped support orphaned Spanish children, and later Spanish refugees who came to this country. Throughout his life he has fought against Franco, Hitler and Mussolini from the working class angle.
At the beginning of the war he registered as a conscientious objector but was put on the military register and offered a commission in the Royal Engineers which he refused, and continued in his job as a civil engineer. He has never sought the limelight, but has been an untiring comrade in the cause of the oppressed.
JOHN HEWETSON.
John Hewetson is a young doctor, who before the war was active in the anti-war movement. In the struggle for peace he came to realise that War is the logic of Class Society, and unlike many, did not shrink from the recognition of this fact, but brought his activities into line with his knowledge. Joining the Anarchist movement in the first year of the war he continued to expose war and capitalism, being more convinced by what he saw in the casualty departments of hospitals of poverty — and war stricken London. Unlike many who shouted for war. Comrade Hewetson stayed in London throughout the blitz of 1940-41 and 1944. He was imprisoned in 1940 for selling a working class paper outside Hyde Park and refusing to pay the fine. Again in 1942 he served two months for refusing to accept a commission in the R.A.M.C., contending that the civilian working class were entitled to more medical attention than they were getting, and opposing the wholesale drafting of doctors into the Army. Comrade Hewetson is the author of a new pamphlet on Italy after Mussolini which would already have been in circulation but for the police raids on Freedom Press.
PHILIP SANSOM
Like Comrade Hewetson, Philip Sansom also worked in the anti-war movement, but when the war came it became crystal clear to him that to try and abolish war was hopeless so long as there were oppressed and oppressors in society. Although a talented young artist who could quite easily have attained comfort on the side of the oppressors by selling his talents in the commercial field, he entered instead into the class struggle, gladly taking sides with the oppressed. He has bent his whole energies unsparingly, and without thought of monetary gain, in the movement of his class — the workers of the world.
None of these comrades has ever been a member of a political party or received any payment for the work they do in the class struggle. All of them earn their own living, like other workers. We lay their records before you, the workers, to give judgement and help us to create a tremendous defence. Remember that P. G. Wodehouse, who broadcast from Berlin many times during the war had no charge brought against him; Badoglio, the murderer of Abyssinia, has been feted and whitewashed; Mosley has been released from gaol.
Workers, awake and watch! Be on your guard, lest in the “fight for democracy” all you will have won will be Fascism! Don’t let men and women who champion the cause of the workers go down before the onslaught of reaction! They need you, you need them. These comrades have fought for years on your side. Give them all you’ve got!
