Freedom is a London-based anarchist website and biannual journal published by Freedom Press which was formerly either a monthly, a fortnightly or a weekly newspaper. It is the world's oldest surviving anarchist publication.
The paper was started in 1886 by volunteers including Peter Kropotkin and Charlotte Wilson and continued with a short interruption in the 1930s until 2014 as a regular publication, moving its news production online and publishing irregularly until 2016, when it became a bi-annual. Originally, the subtitle was "A Journal of Anarchist Socialism". The title was changed to "A Journal of Anarchist Communism" in June 1889. Currently it's labelled simply as an "Anarchist Journal". The newspaper's mission statement was originally stated in every issue and summarises the writers' view of anarchism:
Anarchists work towards a society of mutual aid and voluntary co-operation. We reject all government and economic repression. This newspaper, published continuously since 1936, exists to explain anarchism more widely and show that only in an anarchist society can human freedom thrive.
The current printed issue does not carry a summary, but the website retains a section of the original 1886 introductory essay by Peter Kropotkin:
We are socialists, disbelievers in property, advocates of the equal claims of all to work for the community as seems good — calling no-one master, and of the equal claim to each to satisfy as seems good to them, their natural needs from the stock of social wealth they have laboured to produce ...We are anarchists, disbelievers in the government of the many by the few in any shape and under any pretext.
History
1886 front pageSeptember 1897 front page
The paper historically featured news from the peace and labour movements and events as well as listing planned events and protests. Staying true to Kropotkin's principle of mutual aid, the paper regularly featured reviews of other anarchist and libertarian socialist publications, such as Organise! and Direct Action as well as other local and international newsletters and journals.
In 2006, the paper gained a colour front for the first time in its history. Along with a number of gradual changes in the content and structure of the paper and organisational changes at Freedom Press, Freedom got a re-design in January 2008. While remaining a fortnightly newspaper, it doubled the number of pages to 16 and reduced to A4 in size, introducing a basic theory section, dedicated business and public sector pages and an increased story count.[1] In late 2011, it switched from fortnightly to monthly publication, which continued until its closure as a regular paper in 2014. It cost £2 per issue.
On 1 March 2014, Freedom announced the closure of its print edition as a monthly publication,[2] continuing to publish online alongside a bi-annual printed freesheet. This was expanded into a 20-page journal from 2016. Frequency dropped to one issue per year during the 2020-2021 Covid pandemic. Freedom currently sees two print issues a year, joined by the daily website Freedom News.[3]
Between the end of the Spanish Civil War and the outbreak of World War II, the fortnightly Spain and the World briefly became Revolt! in 1939 before adopting the title War Commentary. In 1945, War Commentary resumed the title of Freedom.
Anarchist communism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property but retention of personal property and collectively-owned items, goods, and services. It supports social ownership of property and the distribution of resources "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
Freedom Press is an anarchist publishing house and bookseller in Whitechapel, London, United Kingdom, founded in 1886.
Albert Isidore Meltzer was an English anarcho-communist activist and writer.
Donald Rooum was an English anarchist cartoonist and writer. He had an extremely long association with the Freedom newspaper in London, to which he regularly submitted his 'Wildcat' comic strips.
Vernon Richards was an Anglo-Italian anarchist, editor, author, engineer, photographer, and companion of Marie-Louise Berneri.
Marie Louise Berneri was an anarchist activist and author. Born in Italy, she spent much of her life in Spain, France, and England. She was involved with the short-lived publication, Revision, with Luis Mercier Vega and was a member of the group that edited Revolt, War Commentary, and the newspaper Freedom. She was a continuous contributor to Spain and the World. She also wrote a survey of utopias, Journey Through Utopia, first published in 1950 and re-issued in 2020. Neither East Nor West is a selection of her writings (1952).
Charlotte Mary Wilson was an English Fabian and anarchist who co-founded Freedom newspaper in 1886 with Peter Kropotkin, and edited, published, and largely financed it during its first decade. She remained editor of Freedom until 1895.
The Manifesto of the Sixteen, or Proclamation of the Sixteen, was a document drafted in 1916 by eminent anarchists Peter Kropotkin and Jean Grave which advocated an Allied victory over Germany and the Central Powers during the First World War. At the outbreak of the war, Kropotkin and other anarchist supporters of the Allied cause advocated their position in the pages of the Freedom newspaper, provoking sharply critical responses. As the war continued, anarchists across Europe campaigned in anti-war movements and wrote denunciations of the war in pamphlets and statements, including one February 1916 statement signed by prominent anarchists such as Emma Goldman and Rudolf Rocker.
Philip Richard Sansom was a British anarchist writer and activist.
Thomas Henry Keell was an English compositor who edited the anarchist periodical Freedom. In 1907, he attended the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam, where he was hailed by Emma Goldman as "one of our most devoted workers on the London Freedom". Keell also contributed to Voice of Labour for many years and was an outspoken opponent of the First World War. He was arrested with his companion Lilian Wolfe during a 1916 raid on the Freedom offices; they were imprisoned and later lived together in Whiteway Colony in Gloucestershire from the 1920s until Keell's death in 1938.
Lilian Gertrude Woolf, better known as Lilian Wolfe, was an English anarchist, pacifist and feminist. She was for most of her life a member of the Freedom Press publishing collective.
Spain and the World is the name of an anarchist publication initiated in response to the Spanish Civil War and the struggles of the CNT-FAI carrying analysis of events as they unfolded. In Britain, the Freedom Paper had begun to peter-out. Thomas Keell had attempted to close the paper down as a reflection of the poor state of the British anarchist movement. Though there was a brief dispute which resulted in two rival 'Freedoms', both had run their course by the early 1930s. The fortnightly publication, Spain and the World had been started by Francesco Galasso and Vernon Richards in 1936 to compete with News Chronicle and New Statesman who were supportive of Soviet policy in Spain. "After the first issue, Spain and the World became a Freedom Press publication, with Tom Keell and Lilian Wolfe" according to Rooum. The paper would go on to revive the fortunes of the Freedom paper with input from important activists like Marie-Louise Berneri and Frank Leech.
George Cores was an anarchist and militant trade unionist. Raised in dire poverty in London's East End, George's illiterate Hanover-born father, John Henry Christopher Kors laboured under fearful conditions in a local sugar refinery until he died, aged just 38, of "lung and heart disease", before George's first birthday. Cores was close to Freedom, but held long protracted disputes with some of the other members particularly Thomas Keell.
Jack Robinson was an anarchist activist and editor of the Freedom paper. A conscientious objector, during the war he worked in an epileptic colony because he was a nurse by training. Linked to this he also took part in a medical experiment living on a diet which caused scurvy, but in fact he earned a good part of his living as a book trader. And his purchase of the tenancy linked to Albert Meltzer’s Wooden Shoe Press was the premise of the long dispute between Meltzer and Vernon Richards.
Alfred Marsh was an anarchist-communist and long-time editor and stalwart of the newspaper Freedom.
Freie Arbeiter Stimme was a Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper published from New York City's Lower East Side between 1890 and 1977. It was among the world's longest running anarchist journals, and the primary organ of the Jewish anarchist movement in the United States; at the time that it ceased publication it was the world's oldest Yiddish newspaper. Historian of anarchism Paul Avrich described the paper as playing a vital role in Jewish–American labor history and upholding a high literary standard, having published the most lauded writers and poets in Yiddish radicalism. The paper's editors were major figures in the Jewish–American anarchist movement: David Edelstadt, Saul Yanovsky, Joseph Cohen, Hillel Solotaroff, Roman Lewis, and Moshe Katz.
Wildcat was a monthly anarchist-libertarian newspaper published from London between 1974 and 1975. Wildcat is not connected to the communist newsletter and journal of the same name published in the 1980s and 1990s.
John Christopher Hewetson was a British anarchist physician, writer and newspaper editor. During the Second World War he was an editor of the anarchist newspaper War Commentary, which saw him imprisoned on three occasions. From the 1940s onwards he was active in advocating for freely available contraception and abortions.
War Commentary was a British World War II era anti-militarist anti-war anarchist newspaper published fortnightly in London by Freedom Press from 1939 to 1945. The paper was launched as a successor to Revolt! and Spain and the World and was opposed to World War II along anti-capitalist and anti-state lines.
Tom Brown (1900–1974) was a British anarcho-syndicalist trade unionist, anti-fascist, engineer and writer. Brown contributed articles to papers including War Commentary, Freedom, and Direct Action alongside authoring numerous pamphlets. Brown was known for his compelling public speaking and ability to communicate effectively in everyday terms. He placed a strong emphasis on federated local groups rather than centralism, and on workplace-based revolutionary trade unionism.
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