Anarchism In Bristol And The West Country To 1950 - Steve Hunt

 ANARCHISM IN BRISTOL AND

THE WEST COUNTRY TO 1950 -

STEVE HUNT

Another radical pamphlet/booklet from the Bristol Radical History Group and if I had my way I'd happily read the lot of them but unfortunately the world we live is not yet a perfect one so I read them instead in dribs and drabs on the basis of when one happens to fall into my hands. This particular one by Steve Hunt entitled Anarchism In Bristol And The West Country To 1950 piqued my interest because Bristol - much to my delight but much to the chagrin of such people as Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees - has a reputation for being a radical city. A reputation for some for even being a city of rioting anarchist mobs storming police stations and pulling down statues of benefactors in a bid to wreck havoc upon its cultural heritage. It's true, these things have happened though not nearly as often enough as I personally would like to see. There's also another slant, of course, on Bristol's radical reputation as being a city of 'woke' nightmares where same sex toilets without doors are the norm and where if you don't identify as being gay then you're just plain weird. Or something like that.

How to write seriously about something that's beyond parody? Like the anti-vaxxers during the Covid lockdown who would protest, saying they wanted their freedom back. Freedom for what, exactly? To go shopping? To go back to how it was before lockdown when everyone and everything was so very free? Like the Brexiteers saying they want their country back. Back to those happier times when England ruled the waves? When there were just three black-and-white television channels, pubs closed at 10.30 and jolly policemen would give scallywags a clip 'round the ear for stealing apples?

It's all to do with perception, really. Perception and hegemony and how that bleeds into everyday life. If you believe for example that England is ruled by a Left-wing Deep State cabal and that the BBC is its main arm of propaganda then apart from Liz Truss you're on your own, as others edge slowly away from you in the same way they'd edge away from a knife-wielding lunatic. If you think freedom is defined by how good your shopping experience is then you're the perfect consumer - and that's your lot in life. If you think there's no longer such a thing as free speech isn't what you mean that you can't say things anymore without being potentially challenged? Or as comedian Stewart Lee put it: 'You can't even be a Nazi nowadays without being accused of being a Nazi. It's woke gone mad.'

So, to Bristol and its reputation for being a radical city. There was a time not so very long ago when Bristol's public profile was managed by Bristol City Council and the city's local newspaper, the Bristol Evening Post, working always in conjunction with each other within pretty strict and somewhat conservative parameters. For the Evening Post, news was just stuff to fill the spaces between the advertisements because ultimately it was all to do with revenue. That news was supplied by the City Council's press office and by the police via their press office, supplemented by the Evening Post's own roving reporters reporting on cats stuck up trees and other such items of interest.

Of course, anything coming from any press office is going to be slanted, biased and one-sided, and if printed verbatim or rinsed through a conservative editorial policy then essentially it's all the equivalent of propaganda for the authorities and the status quo, presented as 'news' in 'The paper all Bristol asked for and helped to create'.

The only answer to this monopolization of how the public and private spheres are depicted is to somehow present and offer an alternative view but by default because that view is going to fall outside of the consensus it's going to be classed as 'radical' even if it's nothing of the sort. And as we know, from 'radical' to 'extreme' is just a very short jump.

When trying to present an alternative you use whatever tools and means available be that public meetings, pamphleteering, the publishing of newspapers and books, etc, etc. Anything to challenge the 'common sense' values and politics of the dominant culture. It's a contest that has been raging since time immemorial and in hindsight its quite inexplicable how the power to define the world and dictate its values has been controlled for so long by the conservative Right. 

In Bristol, that power has always been concentrated in just a few albeit very strong institutions all channeled through its local media. There's been many challenges to that power over the years but all deftly dealt with by cutting them off at the head though in the last few decades - whether by accident or design it matters not - there's been a change of tactic with more of a 'many-headed Hydra' approach coming into play. It's still an on-going process with no end in sight as of yet but this new approach involving music, film, physical media, the Internet and social media has without question upset the apple cart leading to Bristol's current 'radical city' reputation.

It goes without saying there's going to be distortions, exaggerations, plain untruths and counter attacks where any alternative is going to be misrepresented and cast as the proverbial 'woke nightmare' but the important thing with all this is that it's in motion. The hand is off the brake. The genie is out the bottle. The cat is out the bag. The train has now left the station and as an old friend of mine would often put it, it's now full steam ahead through the shit.

Which brings us to the Bristol Radical History Group and the part they have played - and are still playing - with their slew of publications. Anarchism In Bristol And The West Country To 1950 admittedly starts on rather shaky ground by suggesting modern anarchism was started by Edmund Burke whose statue can be found on Broad Quay, in Bristol. It's stretching it a bit and the author probably knows this but it makes at least for an interesting claim, particularly as by doing so it puts Bristol at the centre of all things anarchist. Burke was a Bristol MP in the 1770s but it wasn't until Pierre-Joseph Proudhon proclaimed himself an anarchist in the 1840s that the actual history of anarchism is said to have begun. Up until Proudhon's declaration, the term 'anarchist' was an insult, used to disparage. Proudhon, however, tied his name to the mast proudly.

It wasn't until the 1880s that an explicitly anarchist movement started to appear in England so that's quite a leap between Burke, Proudhon and such people as William Morris visiting Bristol in 1885 to give a talk at the City Museum that the Evening Post amusingly dismissed as 'pernicious nonsense'. No change there then from the Post. A meeting was also attended in 1889 at St James' Hall in Cumberland Street in Bristol by none other than Peter Kropotkin. This is really all the evidence needed to show that for anarchist ideas during this period it was the lift-off point.

Steve Hunt traces a line from Bristolians such as Edward Carpenter, Helena Born and Miriam Daniell, Gertrude Dix and George Barrett all the way to the one-time 'most dangerous woman in America' Emma Goldman visiting Bristol in 1925 to give talks at Bristol's YMCA and the Folk House, on Park Street, staying at a house in Redland. This lineage that Steve Hunt traces is an important one as it's people who over the course of Bristol's history have in their own way all added to how Bristol is today. 

Of course, these people have by and large been ignored by those who have always plotted and recorded the history of Bristol, or when not ignored have been cast by the powers that be and the powers that have been as 'pernicious' or 'extremist'. Rather than having them remain as denigrated figures Steve Hunt raises them instead to their rightful positions, that being as heroes one and all, and in the process providing a valuable and important service to the city.

Anarchism In Bristol And The West Country To 1950 isn't a definitive book on the subject but it's a good stepping stone for the curious of mind to investigate further. And stepping stones are what it's always been about, be it the potential stepping stone of a guest speaker at a public meeting, the potential stepping stones of writing a pamphlet, a book or an article, the potential stepping stone of singing a song, or even the definite stepping stone of a full blown riot. All stepping stones to somewhere over the rainbow.

John Serpico