Damned Fools In Utopia

Nicolas Walter, David Goodway

Description

Nicolas Walter was the son of the neurologist, W. Grey Walter, and both his grandfathers had known Peter Kropotkin and Edward Carpenter. However, it was the twin jolts of Suez and the Hungarian Revolution while still a student, followed by participation in the resulting New Left and nuclear disarmament movement, that led him to anarchism himself. His personal history is recounted in two autobiographical pieces in this collection as well as the editor’s introduction.

During the 1960s he was a militant in the British nuclear disarmament movement—especially its direct-action wing, the Committee of 100—he was one of the Spies for Peace (who revealed the State’s preparations for the governance of Britain after a nuclear war), he was close to the innovative Solidarity Group and was a participant in the homelessness agitation. Concurrently with his impressive activism he was analyzing acutely and lucidly the history, practice and theory of these intertwined movements; and it is such writings—including Non-violent Resistance and The Spies for Peace and After—that form the core of this book. But there are also memorable pieces on various libertarians, including the writers George Orwell, Herbert Read and Alan Sillitoe, the publisher C.W. Daniel and the maverick Guy A. Aldred. The Right to be Wrong is a notable polemic against laws limiting the freedom of expression. Other than anarchism, the passion of Walter’s intellectual life was the dual cause of atheism and rationalism; and the selection concludes appropriately with a fine essay on Anarchism and Religion and his moving reflections, Facing Death.

Nicolas Walter scorned the pomp and frequent ignorance of the powerful and detested the obfuscatory prose and intellectual limitations of academia. He himself wrote straightforwardly and always accessibly, almost exclusively for the anarchist and freethought movements. The items collected in this volume display him at his considerable best.

Sujets

• Atheism
• Left-libertarianism
• Freethought
• Nonviolence
• Socialism

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604865660
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

This edition copyright © 2011 PM Press and David Goodway Nicolas Walter’s essays are published by permission of Christine Walter who retains copyright for individual essays. All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-1-60486-222-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2010927836
PM Press PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org
Printed in the United States on recycled paper by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com
Cover and internal design: Josh MacPhee | justseeds.org
CONTENTS
Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction
1. Thirty Years’ War: Some Autobiography
2. An Autobiographical and Textual Note
3. Damned Fools in Utopia
4. Non-violent Resistance: Men against War
5. The Committee of 100: Ends and Means
6. The Committee of 100 and Anarchism (with Ruth Walter)
7. The Spies for Peace and After
8. The Regional Seats of Government, 1919-1963
9. Fifty Years of the Peace Pledge Union and Peace News
10. Bertrand Russell and the Bomb
11. The New Squatters
12. The Solidarity Group and Anarchism
13. Listen, Solidarist!
14. Cornelius Castoriadis: An Obituary
15. Cornelius Castoriadis: A Review
16. Re-reading Read
17. Remembering Herbert Read
18. George Orwell and Anarchism
19. Because He Is a Man: Alan Sillitoe
20. The Short Stories of Alan Sillitoe
21. C. W. Daniel: The Odd Man
22. Guy A. Aldred, 1886-1963
23. Dorothy Day
24. Three Intellectuals
25. The Assassination of President Kennedy: Does It Really Matter?
26. Diana as Star and Spectacle
27. The Right to Be Wrong
28. Anarchism and Religion
29. Facing Death
Books and pamphlets by Nicolas Walter
ABBREVIATIONS
APCF Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation
ARP Air Raid Precautions
ASLEF Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
CNT Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
CO Conscientious Objector
DAC Direct Action Committee against Nuclear War
FAI Federación Anarquista Ibérica
GLC Greater London Council
HO Home Office
ILP Independent Labour Party
IUDA Industrial Union of Direct Actionists
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCF No Conscription Fellowship
NHS National Health Service
NLR New Left Review
NVC Non-Violent Commission
OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
POUM Partido Obrero de Unificatión Marxista
PPU Peace Pledge Union
PRO Public Record Office
ROC Royal Observer Corps
RPA Rationalist Press Association
RSG Regional Seat of Government
SDF Social Democratic Federation
SIGINT Signals Intelligence
TUC Trades Union Congress
VND Voice of Nuclear Disarmament
YCND Youth Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
PREFACE
T WO OR THREE DAYS AFTER N ICOLAS DIED IN 2000, I TELEPHONED Freedom Press to say I’d like to select a collection of his articles as a tribute. I’d always been surprised they’d never published such a volume and knew Nicolas had felt the same. I was given the go-ahead and was even sent copies of some of his longer pieces. I’d already worked with Vernon Richards on editions of Alex Comfort and Herbert Read for Freedom Press and felt Nicolas’s best articles would hold their own alongside Comfort a major influence on him and enormously admired to the end and Read, for whom in contrast (as will be seen) he had little time, probably largely because of Read’s un-anarchistic conduct when a member of the Committee of 100.
I proceeded to go through my voluminous files of newspaper cuttings and runs of Anarchy, Solidarity, Inside Story, Wildcat, and Raven, as well as partial holdings of Freedom for the 1960s. After six months, I forwarded a memoir to Angel Alley, together with the suggested contents of two volumes, one essentially what was published in 2007 as The Anarchist Past and the other, the present volume, centred on the 1960s, nuclear disarmament, the Committee of 100 and the Spies for Peace. I hoped that Freedom Press would publish both but was entirely prepared to reduce my selection to a single volume. Yet after much delay and to my great disgust given Nicolas’s decades of commitment to Freedom, Anarchy, and Raven (see "Thirty Years’ War") I was eventually informed that Freedom Press considered they would be commemorating him adequately by bringing out a new edition of About Anarchism and they didn’t intend to do any more.
I thereupon contacted AK Press in Oakland, California, already the leading anglophone anarchist publisher, who replied that, although NW was a good writer, a book of his articles wouldn’t sell well enough for AK to publish it. In an aside I’d mentioned the possibility of doing the same for Maurice Brinton (i.e., Chris Pallis), yet that, I was assured, was a book would AK would definitely want in its list. Hence followed, in 2004, For Workers’ Power, the title Ramsey Kanaan tells me he is proudest to have published.
That, I thought, sank the prospects of a Nicolas volume, if even AK couldn’t anticipate making a success of it. It was therefore extremely tentatively that I mentioned the possibility to Ross Bradshaw, whose Five Leaves Publications had brought out the English-language edition of my conversations with Colin Ward as Talking Anarchy as well as several reprints of Ward titles. His immediate response was the very proper one that such a book needed to be published, although the print run would have to be short since he didn’t expect it to make money. I fought off the suggestion to include rationalist material but considered The Anarchist Past, almost a history of anarchist thought and practice, would sell better than one laden with 1960s material even though that was what most interested me (having a great impact on me at the time) as well as being the work in which I believe Nicolas was at his most distinctive and original.
When AK got to hear about the Five Leaves book, its publication was imminent, but their reaction was entirely different to the response of 2001 (and why I still don’t understand), now wanting, at too late a stage, to co-publish The Anarchist Past. So I told Ramsey, then about to launch this new imprint, PM, that there was another book, Damned Fools in Utopia, which he was more than welcome to have. I still doubt its saleability although a number of people have lamented The Anarchist Past’s lack of nuclear disarmament material but continue to be impressed by its contents.
The selection of both volumes, as I’ve indicated, is skewed towards what especially interested me, by what I was moved to preserve at the time of publication. On the other hand, repeated requests over the years to relatives, comrades, and admirers of Nicolas have not resulted in a single addition or exclusion from the provisional list of contents.
A condition of PM’s publishing Damned Fools in Utopia was that it would have a lengthy introduction by me. Well it has, but it is still essentially the memoir I wrote in 2000, a revision of which serves as the introduction to The Anarchist Past, and which I’ve slightly changed again. Obviously quite a few readers will only read, even buy, just one of the books and I feel this outline and appreciation of Nicolas’s career needs to be in both. Similarly, I have also included for a second time "Thirty Years’ War," an important autobiographical statement which also details his relations with Freedom Press. I apologize to readers of both volumes for the duplication of the introduction; but, once I’ve written on a given subject, to date I’ve found it impossible to come up with a significantly different treatment. Should this be seen as a strength or a weakness? It’s a strength in that I’ve obviously thought hard about the appropriate issues in the first place and now see no reason to change my interpretation. But I appreciate it’s a weakness since I try the patience of and disappoint publishers, editors, reviewers, academics and ordinary readers (and it is the latter, by the way, for whom I always write).
I have, though, made a small but important correction. Nicolas’s first wife, Ruth, objected strongly to my describing him at the time of his association with the Solidarity group as a "pacifist." She points out that, while both of them were committed to non-violence as a means to certain ends, they didn’t regard it as the only way of attacking the State and hence unlike the pacifists see non-violent direct action as "a kind of religion." They both disagreed politically with the pacifists in the Committee of 100 who (like Read) believed property should never be damaged, the Walters advocating instead the use of wire-cutters to cut the fences enclosing airbases. I would add that, if such pacifists had been involved in the Spies for Peace, they would have opposed secrecy and have been sentenced to many years of imprisonment.
Ruth also remarks that "The Committee of 100: Ends and Means" was the first article Nicolas had printed in the Guardian, that he was "incredibly chuffed" about this and that the entire payment went to buy her an engagement ring.
Finally, I have not, for obvious reasons, attempted to eliminate the repetition that occurs between some of the original articles, particularly those written during 1961-63. This may annoy the few who read the collection from cover to cover; but most readers will, I suspect, dive in and sample individual chapters, here and there.
INTRODUCTION
IT WAS TYPICAL OF NICOLAS THAT WHEN I ASKED HIM TO CHECK THE references to himself in a brief memo