Freedom Bulletin No.8, September, 1929.

Freedom Bulletin, No 8, September 1929

Printed by The Stepney Press for Freedom Press,

Whiteway Colony, Gloucestershire, England.

It is thought that this copy of the Freedom Bulletin may be a later reissue although there are no inclusions to support that idea. If anyone can verify the edition of the Bulletin as being a later reissue, then please let us know.

Donated to SoR by Sound   Thief.

Contents;

The Governments Promising Start

History of the First International –MN

Edward Carpenter – Bessie Ward (1844-1929)

Death of Wlm C Owen – TH Keell

William Charles Owen – Victor B. Neuburg

Cuttings and Comments-BBW

Berkmans ABC of Communist Anarchism

Appeal to our Readers

The Road to Freedom

Thomas Henry Keell (24 September 1866 – 26 June 1938) was Editor of this issue No.8 of Freedom Bulletin.

Keell attended the First International, 1907, a history of which is included in this Issue. Joining the Freedom Press Publishing Collective as a compositor from the Spectator, he gradually became Editor around 1910 (other account 1913) when Alfred Marsh (1858-1914) became ill and could no longer produce it (Marsh having restarted it in 1895). Marsh and Keell both contributed to ‘Voice of Labour’ (started 1907), a workplace agitation paper also published by Freedom Press.

Over these years Kropotkin was a main contributor to Freedom Collective but with Keel’s anti-militarist stance on WW1, Kropotkin became more alienated and the collective split by 1916 with the majority supporting Keell’s position. Anti-war agitation under the Defence of the Realm Act carried a fine or prison sentence. For example in Glasgow, the anarchist shop steward at Weirs Munitions factory, Jack Smith received 18 months for a speech he gave and also for being in possession of revolutionary literature when arrested at a demonstration on Glasgow Green to protest against the implementation of the Munitions Act and the deportation of the Clyde Workers’ Committee leadership to Edinburgh.

Being anti-militarist with Keell as Editor, The Voice of Labour published an article on civil disobedience which encouraged readers to dodge the draft and go into hiding in the Scottish Highlands. As a result Keell and Lilian Gertrude Woolf (1875-1974) his companion and a co-founder, were arrested and imprisoned, Keele for 3 months, Woolf being pregnant with their son got less time.

After release they lived in the Commune at Marsh House and later with WC Owen at Willesden, before moving to the Whiteway Colony [1] near Stroud in Gloucestershire from the 1920’s. This community was founded in 1898 by Quakers and Tolstoyans who purchased the land and then burnt the property deeds on the end of a pitchfork in a symbolic rejection of the notion of property. [5] A court ruling in 1955 proved that no one owned the legal title for the land. Keell and Lilian Wolfe moved there with the stock of Freedom Press from London. From Whiteway, Keell continued to produce fifteen issues of a Freedom Bulletin until 1932, but funds and support dwindled.

This is No 8 of that series of Freedom Bulletins.

[1] Nellie Shaw, 1935, Whiteway: A Colony on the Cotswolds National Library of Scotland-General Reading Room (stored offsite) Shelfmark; R.178.g

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