History
History: The Anarchist Ball of 1961
March 10th: As the British anarchist movement got going after a long decade on the back foot, Freedom’s October Ball showcased a burgeoning powerhouse.
Far from therapeutic …
March 2nd: PAT ARROWSMITH, field organiser for the Committee of 100, was serving a 3-month sentence in Gateside Prison, Greenock, for her part in the anti-Polaris demonstration at Holy Loch when this article was published by Freedom Press.
History gallery: The Committee of 100
February 15th: Freedom Newspaper’s first ever full-page picture spread from 1961 offers a unique record of the famous Committee of 100 anti-war march of February 18th that year, which began what was to become the modern British anti-war movement. Led by anarchist fellow-traveller Bertrand Russell, who resigned from CND to set it up, the Committee of 100 ran
Notes of an accidental jailer
January 4th: THE LEAST EXPERIENCE OF PRISONS teaches you that they’re criminal universities for prisoners; they morally corrupt all law-enforcement officers; they make criminal the societies they’re intended to ‘protect’.
Gallery: The 1979 Women’s March
December 30th: The gallery below consists of a set of slowly disintegrating photos of a huge abortion rights march which took place in 1979, rescued from the Freedom Press archive.
1958: The Season of Goodwill
December 23rd: Ahead of Christmas, we reproduce the following historic seasonal Freedom article from nearly 60 years ago, comprised of a selection of small festive vignettes by Philip Sansom.
Practices of Self-Organisation in 1980s South Africa
December 17th: In this transcribed talk, Russian academic Daria Zelenova explores the experiences of radical militants in 1980s South Africa and the implications of events from that time for contemporary protest.
Augustus John — an appreciation
December 2nd: WHEN AUGUSTUS JOHN DIED at the age of 83 on October 31st 1961, the newspapers were full of such adjectives as “boisterous, blustering, brilliant” (Daily Herald) and “robust, swashbuckling, romantic” (The Times).
A year through anarchist eyes: 1950
November 16th: Rob Ray takes a unique run through the pages of Freedom in 1950, a time when anarchism was in a pretty dire state, but was starting to gain traction via a focus fighting issues such as capital punishment, nuclear weapons and militarism, which would characterise some of anarchism’s biggest campaigns later in the decade.
