British Anarchist Tradition

When contemporary politicians inveigh against "anarchists" at protests, they typically are just using a shorthand for "hoodlums intent on chaos," but as Honeywell (politics, Sheffield Hallam U., UK) notes, many in the current anti-capitalist movements do in fact have ties to the rich intellectual traditions of political anarchism and therefore it can serve some value to examine these past traditions of anarchism. In pursuit of that goal, she disinters the ideas of three relatively obscure British anarchists (to this anarchist reviewer, certainly): Herbert Read, Alex Comfort, and Colin Ward. She aims to place these anarchist intellectuals in their proper 20th century and, importantly, British context (as native British anarchism is often dismissed as a chimera, even by anarchists such as movement historian George Woodcock), discussing how they were deeply engaged in British public debate through their work and showing how their contributions to debates over questions of war, democracy, pacifism, radical practice, housing, education, social policy, and sexual morality were intimately and explicitly underpinned by their understanding of anarchist political ideals. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Carissa Honeywell is a Lecturer in Politics at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. She conducts research in the fields of political ideology and history of political ideas, as well as in utopian studies. She has presented her research on anarchism at conferences and workshops around the world and organized, in collaboration with Sheffield and Oxford universities, a conference that addressed the role of utopian thought in political ideology.