by William J. Fishman
Hanbury, 343 pages hardback, £20.00
This scholarly work of social history, first published in 1988, has been out of print for ten years. Freedom Press Bookshop sold substantial numbers of the paperback version of the first edition but this time, we are disappointed to learn, there will be no paperback. The main subject of the book is the condition of poor inhabitants of east London in 1888 (the year of the Jack the Ripper murders), but a review in the Daily Telegraph property section concentrates on the bits about property prices, and this review will concentrate on the bits about anarchists.
There was a regular speaking pitch at Victoria Park. One speaker on an anarchist platform there was described as a small energetic woman, a description which would fit Charlotte Wilson, then editor of this newspaper. Two of the speakers on the platform of Morris's Socialist League, who gave their names to the park-keeper, were the anarchists Fred Charles and Samuel Mainwaring.
Ever since London became affluent in the Middle Ages, immigrants have settled east of the city wall, and there have been campaigns against them. In 1888, the immigrants were eastern European Jews, and "the most forceful advocates for the Jewish immigrants were the anarchists". An editorial in Freedom announced that "several English groups of socialists gave practical proof how thoroughly they appreciate the total character of the labour struggle by helping the Worker's Friend over a financial crisis". The several English groups are not identified, but we may guess that Charlotte Wilson herself was one of the benefactors.
Another may have been William Morris, who did not identify himself as an anarchist although anarchists wrote in his newspaper, Commonweal (which was to become an anarchist paper when Morris gave up the editorship). The anarchist Frank Kitz contributed an article headed 'The Blasted Furriners' in which he wrote "the 'Man in the Street' ... lends a ready ear to the wiles of those who wish to distract the attention of the workers from the real causes of their poverty ... The foreign working man landing in a strange land ... finds every man's hand against him on account of this illiberal teaching".
"Alas", writes Fishman, "support from this quarter, however generous and valid, was more of a liability than an asset for its recipient. For the Anarchists were a powerless, minuscule group, who, thanks to contemporary myths and newspaper propaganda, were regarded as criminals even by 'respectable' working men".
The Yiddish paper Arbeter Fraint (The Worker's Friend) was not then the anarchist daily it subsequently became, but a weekly open to all varieties of socialist opinion. Its circulation was variously estimated at more than 17,000 and less than 200.
This article was originally published in Freedom: The Anarchist Fortnightly.
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