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Summary
It is popularly believed that British anarchism underwent a ‘renaissance’ in the 1960s, as conventional revolutionary tactics were replaced by an ethos of permanent protest. Often associated with Colin Ward and his journal Anarchy, this tactical shift is said to have occurred due to growing awareness of Gustav Landauer's work. This article challenges these readings by focusing on Herbert Read's book Education through Art, a work motivated by Read's dissatisfaction with anarchism's association with political violence. Arguing that aesthetic education could remodel social relationships in a non-hierarchical fashion, Read pioneered the reassessment of revolutionary tactics in the 1940s that is associated with the 1960s generation. His role in these debates has been ignored, but the broader political context of Read's contribution to anarchist theory has also been neglected. The reading of Read's work advanced here recovers his importance to these debates, and highlights the presence of an indigenous strand of radical thought that sought novel solutions for the problems of the age.
Acknowledgements
An early version of this paper was presented at the workshop ‘Alternative Education(s): Education and the Left’ at the University of Manchester in November 2011. I am grateful to the participants for their comments, and to the organiser, Edward Poole, for reading a draft of this article. Thanks also to, Professors Stuart Jones and Martin Adams, and Dr Catherine Feely, for their comments on this paper.
Notes
1 George Woodcock, Anarchism and Anarchists: Essays (Kingston, ON, 1992), 138 and 231.
2 Woodcock, Anarchism and Anarchists, 138.
3 Colin Ward, Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2004), 74.
4 George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (London, 1986), 412. George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (London, 1970, first published in 1962), 443.
5 C. Ward, Anarchism: Introduction, 74.
6 For these terms, see respectively David Stafford, ‘Anarchists in Britain Today’, in Anarchism Today, edited by David E. Apter and James Joll (London, 1971), 91; Stuart White, ‘Making Anarchism Respectable? The Social Philosophy of Colin Ward’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 12 (2007), 11–28 (12); Ruth Kinna, Anarchism: A Beginner's Guide (Oxford, 2005), 142–47.
7 Woodcock, Anarchism: A History (1986), 385.
8 Stafford, ‘Anarchists in Britain’, in Anarchism Today, edited by Apter and Joll, 93. Alongside Stafford's piece, many articles in the excellent edition of the journal Anarchist Studies devoted to Ward make this case. In particular, see Carl Levy, ‘Introduction: Colin Ward (1924–2010)’, Anarchist Studies, 19(2) (2011), 7–15; Peter Marshall, ‘Colin Ward: Sower of Anarchist Ideas’, Anarchist Studies, 19(2) (2011), 16–21.
9 Eugene Lunn, Prophet of Community: The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer (Berkeley, CA, 1973), 3.
10 Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (London, 1993), 415.
11 Landauer quoted in Lunn, Prophet of Community, 226; David Goodway, Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward (Liverpool, 2006), 319.
12 C. W. [Colin Ward], ‘Gustav Landauer’, Anarchy, 54(8) (1965), 244–52 (248, 247)
13 For narratives emphasising Landauer's importance, see Goodway, Anarchist Seeds, 318–19; Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, 415; Stafford, ‘Anarchists in Britain’, in Anarchism Today, edited by Apter and Joll, 92; Woodcock, Anarchism: A History (1986), 420–21.
14 The closing chapter of Crowder's work on the ‘classical tradition’, which comments on contemporary developments in anarchist theory, mentions Murray Bookchin and Colin Ward, but not Read; see George Crowder, Classical Anarchism: The Political Thought of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin (Oxford, 1991), 194–96. David Goodway's book goes some way to correcting this lacuna, but his ultimate view is that Read was not a significant thinker, and that his role was that of conduit between the classical tradition and the modern anarchism of Bookchin and Ward; see Goodway, Anarchist Seeds, 189. Similarly, Marshall gives Read some space, but deems him ‘no original thinker’; see Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, 587–93 (592). Woodcock's amended edition of Anarchism mentions Read, but gives him a marginal position. That he also wrote a comprehensive intellectual biography of Read suggests that Woodcock saw his importance less in terms of an anarchist thinker, and more in terms of his cultural theories, thus introducing an unnecessary division between these spheres of Read's work; see Woodcock, Anarchism: A History (1986), 382–84; George Woodcock, Herbert Read: The Stream and the Source (London, 1972). For other texts in which Read is marginalised, see April Carter, The Political Theory of Anarchism (London, 1971), 91–93; Benjamin Franks, Rebel Alliances: The Means and Ends of Contemporary British Anarchisms (Edinburgh, 2006), 52; David Miller, Anarchism (London, 1984), 141–51.
15 Read is the most interesting, if not necessarily the most trustworthy, guide to his political development; see Herbert Read, The Contrary Experience: Autobiographies (London, 1963), 70–146, 255–81. For a debate on this topic see David Goodway, ‘Herbert Read, Organicism, Abstraction and an Anarchist Aesthetic’, Anarchist Studies, 19(1) (2011), 82–97; Alan Antliff, ‘David Goodway Critiques Herbert Read’, Anarchist Studies, 19(1) (2011), 98–106.
16 Francis Berry, Herbert Read (London, 1961), 9; Sam Black, ‘Herbert Read: His Contribution to Art Education and to Education through Art’, in Herbert Read: A Memorial Symposium, edited by Robert Skelton (London, 1969), 57–65; Goodway, Anarchist Seeds, 196–97; Marshall, Demanding the Impossible, 588; Michael J. Parsons, ‘Herbert Read on Education’, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 3(4) (1969), 27–45; Malcolm Ross, ‘Herbert Read: Art, Education, and the Means of Redemption’, in Herbert Read Reassessed, edited by David Goodway (Liverpool, 1998), 196–214; Woodcock, Herbert Read, 264–81.
17 Dana Ward, ‘Art and Anarchy: Herbert Read's Aesthetic Politics’, in ReReading Read: New Views on Herbert Read, edited by Michael Paraskos (London, 2007), 20–33. Carissa Honeywell's recent book goes some way towards addressing this issue, but it is not primarily intended as an historical work, and the context of Read's ideas remains somewhat underdeveloped; see Carissa Honeywell, A British Anarchist Tradition: Herbert Read, Alex Comfort and Colin Ward (London, 2011). Allan Antliff also shows sensitivity to the context of Read's aesthetics; see Allan Antliff, ‘Open Form and the Abstract Imperative: Herbert Read and Contemporary Anarchist Art’, Anarchist Studies, 16(1) (2008), 6–19.
18 Art education had been a relatively early interest for Read, and his inaugural address as professor of fine art at the University of Edinburgh, delivered in 1931, was entitled ‘The Place of Art in a University’. This text is reprinted in Herbert Read, Education through Art (London, 1943), 251–58.
19 Herbert Read, ‘Bedlam Politics’ [first published in 1941], in Herbert Read: A One-Man Manifesto and Other Writings for Freedom Press, edited by David Goodway (London, 1994), 61–64 (63).
20 For personal inconsistencies, see Goodway, Anarchist Seeds, 200–01; Honeywell, British Anarchist Tradition, 54.
21 Herbert Read, ‘Anarchism: Past and Future’ [first published in 1947], in Read: One-Man Manifesto, 117–25 (124).
22 Read, ‘Anarchism: Past and Future’, in Read: One-Man Manifesto, 124.
23 Peter Kropotkin, ‘Modern Science and Anarchism’, in Evolution and Environment, edited by George Woodcock (Montréal, QC, 1995, first published in 1912), 15–107 (31–34).
24 Read, ‘Anarchism: Past and Future’, in Read: One-Man Manifesto, 118–20.
25 Read, ‘Anarchism: Past and Future’, in Read: One-Man Manifesto, 124.
26 Read, ‘Anarchism: Past and Future’, in Read: One-Man Manifesto, 124.
27 For a classic statement of this view, see Peter Kropotkin, ‘Glimpses into the Labour Movement in this Country’ in Act for Yourselves: Articles from Freedom, 1886–1907, edited by Nicolas Walter and Heiner Becker (London, 1993), 114–121.
28 Read, ‘Anarchism: Past and Future’, in Read: One-Man Manifesto, 122.
29 Read, ‘Anarchism: Past and Future’, in Read: One-Man Manifesto, 118.
30 Goodway, Anarchist Seeds, 189–90; Honeywell, British Anarchist Tradition, 56–57; Nicolas Walter, ‘Remembering Herbert Read’, Anarchy, 91 (9) (1968), 287–88 (288).
31 Richard Taylor, Against the Bomb: The British Peace Movement: 1958–1965 (Oxford, 1988), 116–18.
32 Herbert Read, The Politics of the Unpolitical (London, 1943), 2, 3.
33 Herbert Read, Poetry and Anarchism (London, 1938), 102; Honeywell, British Anarchist Tradition, 56–57.
34 A. J. P. Taylor, The Trouble Makers: Dissent Over Foreign Policy, 1792–1939 (London, 1993, first published in 1957), 51 note; Read, Poetry and Anarchism, 116.
35 Read, Poetry and Anarchism, 120.
36 See George Orwell, ‘Pacifism and the War: A Controversy’ [first published in 1942], in The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Peter Davison, Ian Angus and Sheila Davison, 20 vols (London, 1997–1998), XIII, 396–400.
37 Herbert Read, ‘The War as Seen by British Artists’, in Britain at War, edited by Monroe Wheeler (New York, 1972, first published in 1941), 11–12 (12).
38 Herbert Read, ‘What is Freedom?’, The New Statesman, 26 August 1944, 137.
39 Herbert Read, Freedom: Is It a Crime? The Strange Case of the Three Anarchists Jailed at the Old Bailey, April 1945: Two Speeches by Herbert Read (London, 1945), 6.
40 ‘Forces Seduction Conspiracy: Three Men Sent to Prison’, Manchester Guardian, 27 April 1945, 3; Read, Freedom: Is it a Crime?. The charges against the fourth defendant, Marie Louise Berneri, were dropped on the basis that, under British law, a wife could not be prosecuted for conspiring with her husband; see Goodway, Anarchist Seeds, 144.
41 For an interesting account of the trial, and particularly Ward's involvement, see Pietro Di Paolo, ‘“The Man Who Knows His Village”: Colin Ward and Freedom Press’, Anarchist Studies, 19(2) (2011), 22–41.
42 Quoted in ‘Duty of Anarchists: Article Leads to Prosecution’, Manchester Guardian, 10 March 1945, 3. See also ‘Attempt to Cause Disaffection: Four Persons on Trial at Old Bailey’, The Times, 24 April 1945, 2.
43 For a useful discussion, see Honeywell, British Anarchist Tradition, 15–16.
44 See Goodway, Anarchist Seeds, 143–44. For a list of members, see Read, Freedom: Is It a Crime?, 14.
45 ‘Freedom Defence Committee Constitution’, in Herbert Read Archive, University of Victoria, Box 7, File 11: 50/1 [hereafter denoted and formatted as HRA, B7, F11: 50/1].
46 For this narrative, see Honeywell, British Anarchist Tradition, 53–55.
47 Woodcock, Anarchism: A History (1970), 414.
48 Herbert Read to Victor Gollancz, 24 December 1948, in HRA, B7, F11: Unnumbered.
49 Read to Gollancz, 24 December 1948, in HRA, B7, F11: Unnumbered.
50 Goodway, Anarchist Seeds, 143.
51 Honeywell, British Anarchist Tradition, 54.
52 The opposite, in effect, of the ‘proliferation of meaning’; see Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, IL, 1992), 85. I am indebted to Eloise Moss for this reference.
53 See ‘Shakespeare's Birthday’, The Times, 24 April 1945, 2; ‘Mr. Churchill at Press Gallery Luncheon’, The Times, 24 April 1945, 2.
54 J. E. Judson, ‘White Bread’, Manchester Guardian, 27 February 1945, 4.
55 Read, Freedom: Is It a Crime?, 11.
56 Read, Freedom: Is It a Crime?, 7.
57 Read, ‘Anarchism: Past and Future’, in Read: One-Man Manifesto, 124.
58 Read, Politics of the Unpolitical, 50.
59 Read, Politics of the Unpolitical, 49.
60 Read, Politics of the Unpolitical, 50.
61 Mark Bevir, The Making of British Socialism (Princeton, NJ, 2011), 242, 246.
62 William Morris, ‘Art and the People: A Socialist's Protest Against Capitalist Brutality; Addressed to the Working Classes’ [first published in 1833], in Art and Society: Lectures and Essays by William Morris, edited by Gary Zabel (Boston, MA, 1993), 43–62 (62).
63 For a useful discussion of Morris's educational ideas, see Ruth Kinna, William Morris: The Art of Socialism (Cardiff, 2000), 172–77.
64 Read, Contrary Experience, 200–01. See also Read, Poetry and Anarchism, 9.
65 Herbert Read, Art and Industry: The Principles of Industrial Design (London, 1944, first published in 1934), 42. On Morris's views of the machine, see William Morris, ‘How We Live and How We Might Live’, in Political Writings of William Morris, edited by A. L. Morton (London, 1973), 134–58 (152).
66 Read, Art and Industry, 43.
67 For Orage's influence on Read, see James King, The Last Modern: A Life of Herbert Read (London, 1990), 28–31; Goodway, Anarchist Seeds, 179–80.
68 R. H. C. [A. R. Orage], ‘Readers and Writers’, New Age: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, and Art, 22 March 1917, 494–95 (494).
69 R. H. C. [A. R. Orage], ‘Readers and Writers’, 494.
70 Kenneth Richmond, ‘Education for Liberty’, New Age: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, and Art, 03 May 1917, 8–9; Kenneth Richmond, ‘Education for Liberty – II’, New Age: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, and Art, 10 May 1917, 32–33; Kenneth Richmond, ‘Education for Liberty – III’, New Age: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, and Art, 17 May 1917, 55–56; Kenneth Richmond, ‘Education for Liberty – IV’, New Age: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, and Art, 24 May 1917, 81–82; Kenneth Richmond, ‘Education for Liberty – V’, New Age: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, and Art, 31 May 1917, 108–09; Kenneth Richmond, ‘Education for Liberty – VI’, New Age: A Weekly Review of Politics, Literature, and Art, 07 June 1917, 131–32. For Freud, see Read, Education through Art, 170–83.
71 Tom Steele, ‘The Leeds Art Club: A Provincial Avant-Garde?’, Literature & History, 14(1) (1988), 91–109.
72 On Orage's influences, see Lee Garver, ‘Neither Progressive nor Reactionary: Reassessing the Cultural Politics of the New Age’, The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies, 2 (2011), 86–115 (96–100). For Read's explanation of his discovery of nineteenth-century socialism and Nietzsche, see Read, Contrary Experience, 165–67, 199–201.
73 Read, Education through Art, 296.
74 For a useful assessment of this debate, see Stuart White, ‘Social Anarchism, Lifestyle Anarchism, and the Anarchism of Colin Ward’, Anarchist Studies, 19(2) (2011), 92–104 (94–97).
75 Read, Education through Art, 297.
76 Read, ‘Anarchism: Past and Future’, in Read: One-Man Manifesto, 124.
77 Read, Education through Art, 297.
78 Herbert Read, ‘Pragmatic Anarchism’, Encounter, January 1968, 54–61 (60).
79 Charles Marriott, ‘Art and the Child: Suggested Reform in Education’, The Times Literary Supplement, 30 October 1943, 526.
80 A.W. James, ‘Moral Education’, The Times Literary Supplement, 17 March 1950, 170. For an equally scathing review, see Eric James, ‘The Bomb and Education’, Manchester Guardian, 03 March 1950, 4.
81 Herbert Read, ‘Education through Art: A Revolutionary Policy’, Art Education, 8(7) (1955), 3–6, 16–17 (3).
82 Read, ‘Education through Art: Revolutionary Policy’, 5.
83 Read, Education through Art, 4.
84 Read, Education through Art, 19.
85 Read, Contrary Experience, 347; Herbert Read, The Forms of Things Unknown: Essays towards an Aesthetic Philosophy (London, 1960), 50.
86 Read, Contrary Experience, 347.
87 Read, Education through Art, 16. See also Ruth D'Arcy Thompson, D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson: The Scholar-Naturalist, 1860–1948 (London, 1958). For a brief essay on Thompson by Read, see Herbert Read, The Tenth Muse: Essays in Criticism (London, 1957), 293–96.
88 Herbert Read, The Education of Free Men (London, 1944), 11.
89 Read, Education through Art, 65.
90 Read, Education through Art, 6.
91 Read, Education through Art, 6, 302.
92 Herbert Read, Anarchy & Order: Essays in Politics (London, 1953), 220. For art as the basis of human consciousness, see Herbert Read, Icon & Idea: The Function of Art in the Development of the Human Consciousness (New York, 1955).
93 Read, Education through Art, 70.
94 Herbert Read, The Cult of Sincerity (London, 1968), 90–91. See also Read, ‘Pragmatic Anarchism’, 60–61.
95 Read, Education through Art, 23.
96 For Read on Buber's influence, see Herbert Read, ‘A Conversation with Herbert Read’, Art Education, 20(9) (1967), 32–35 (34). For Ward on Buber, see Colin Ward, Influences: Voices of Creative Dissent (London, 1992), 88–90.
97 Read, Education through Art, 282.
98 Read, Education through Art, 277.
99 Read, Tenth Muse, 96.
100 Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, foreword (London, 1949), 46, 53.
101 Herbert Read, Existentialism, Marxism, and Anarchism (London, 1949), 27.
102 Read, Existentialism, Marxism, and Anarchism, 27. I explore this theme in more depth in Matthew S. Adams, ‘“As Harmless as the Rats and Crows”: Religion and Spirituality in Herbert Read's Anarchism’, in Essays in Anarchism and Religion, edited by Alexandre Christoyannopoulos and Matthew S. Adams, forthcoming.
103 On communal individuality, see Alan Ritter, Anarchism: A Theoretical Analysis (Cambridge, 1980).
104 Herbert Read, The Philosophy of Anarchism (London, 1940), 13. See also Read, Politics of the Unpolitical, 160.
105 See Stuart Christie, Granny Made Me an Anarchist (London, 2004), 320; Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer, The Floodgates of Anarchy (London, 1972), 154; Albert Meltzer, I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels: Sixty Years of Commonplace Life and Anarchist Agitation (Edinburgh, 1996), 126; Vernon Richards, Protest Without Illusions (London, 1981), 82.
106 See Matthew S. Adams, ‘“The Truth of a Few Simple Ideas”: Peter Kropotkin, Herbert Read and the Tradition of Anarchist-Communism in Britain, 1886–1968’, (University of Manchester, Ph.D. thesis, 2011).
107 See Uri Gordon, ‘Anarchism Reloaded’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 12 (2007), 29–48 (40, 36). The italics are Read's own; see Herbert Read, Education for Peace (London, 1949), 56. The term was first used in 1982 by Wini Breines in her book on the American New Left; see Wini Breines, Community and Organization in the New Left: 1962–1968: The Great Refusal (New York, 1982), 6.
108 Landauer's short piece on Social Democracy, printed under the auspices of The Torch, is an exception; see Gustave [sic] Landauer, Social Democracy in Germany (London, [1896]). Aside from this, the main biographies date from the 1970s; see Ruth Link-Salinger Hyman, Gustav Landauer: Philosopher of Utopia (Indianapolis, IN, 1977); Lunn, Prophet of Community; Charles B. Maurer, Call to Revolution: The Mystical Anarchism of Gustav Landauer (Detroit, MI, 1971). Landauer's own work was only made available with Gustav Landauer, For Socialism, translated by David J. Parent (St. Louis, MO, 1978). This lacuna was recently partly filled; see Gustav Landauer, Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, translated by Gabriel Kuhn (Oakland, CA, 2010). Colin Ward made the same point about the meagre coverage of Landauer's thought in English; see C. W. [C. Ward], ‘Gustav Landauer’, 244.
109 For this narrative, see Woodcock, Anarchism: A History (1986), 420; Goodway, Anarchist Seeds, 189.
110 Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995), 54.
111 Read, Poetry and Anarchism, 16. Read's eventual dissatisfaction with London life and his return to his native Yorkshire is indicative of this tension. For a useful discussion of this, see King, The Last Modern.
112 Herbert Read to George Woodcock, 15th April 1950, in ‘Copies of Letters from Herbert Read to George Woodcock: 62.29’, in HRA.
113 For Bookchin's comments on Read, see Murray Bookchin, ‘Deep Ecology, Anarchosyndicalism, and the Future of Anarchist Thought’, in Murray Bookchin and others, Deep Ecology & Anarchism: A Polemic (London, 1997), 47–58; Murray Bookchin, ‘The Postwar Period’, in Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left: Interviews and Essays: 1993–1998 (Edinburgh, 1999), 44–58 (57); Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Edinburgh, 2004), 36.
114 C. Ward, Influences, 79. For Read's early use of Buber, alongside Education through Art, see Read, Existentialism, Marxism, and Anarchism, 27.