Almost Talking Green

The picture features just a part of the crowd at Housmans last night for the joint launch of Five Leaves' Talking Green by the late Colin Ward and Autonomy by Dan Poyner, a book on the graphic design of Colin Ward's old Anarchy magazine. The audience stretched right to the door of the shop and behind the speakers to the back of the shop. Front centre with her arms folded is Harriet Ward. I was touched when some of the young people came up to say they had only just discovered Colin's work as they were squatters and found that everything they read on squatting refers to Colin's books on that subject.
I found it a difficult evening, in part because it was so like the last time Colin had a book launch there - his last public appearance which was the last time I met him, though the mood of course was celebratory. Since Colin's death there has been a special issue of Anarchist Studies, a Colin Ward reader, a short memorial volume Remembering Colin Ward, a conference on his ideas about education (the papers will be published) and now these two books. But the main reason I found it difficult was that I had overdosed on drugs to keep a cold away and was completely exhausted as well as having a head made of cotton-wool. I could not make much sense of my notes and when one person asked for more information on Talking Green I could hardly remember anything about the book. Worse, the basic rule of launching a book is to refer to it from time to time, read teasers from the book... so I chose to read something from a long out of print book published by Penguin and a longer piece from Colin's Anarchy in Action published by Freedom Press. Naturally those were the books that people wanted to buy - one unavailable and one only there in small quantities which sold out immediately! Despite my efforts we did shift a few Talking Green.
More coherent were Ken Worpole, talking about Colin's aesthetics and Dan Poyner and Richard Hollis on the graphic art of Anarchy. It was a shame that Rufus Segar - the main Anarchy designer is now too old to travel in London but Dan and I both remarked on his extraordinary correspondence - letters with 44 penny stamps on the envelope, sometimes just containing a series of visual and written puns. Dan's beautiful book Autonomy sold in good numbers.
I was particularly pleased that the architect and writer Tom Woolley, visiting from Ireland, spoke from the floor. Tom's first published piece had been in Anarchy and his contact with Colin brought him on immensely, with their shared interest in Walter Segal's ideas of self-build housing. Tom is now working on houses built out of hemp (and no, you can't smoke them). Another floor speaker remarked how excited he was each time his sub copy of Anarchy came through as every cover was different and each issue would have a set of serious articles about issues that he had not thought about before. There are few magazines that closed over forty years ago that are still loved and remembered, and reintroduced to new generations of readers.
Colin was one of a generation of productive anarchists from different backgrounds - Vernon Richards and Marie Louise Berneri, both with a family background of Italian anti-fascism, the doctor John Hewitson, the secularist Nicolas Walter, Philip Sampson and others, all now passed away but whose work in making anarchism relevant to everyday life remains important.
I'll end this piece with the last two sentences of Anarchy in Action - which I managed to read twice last night - which, as much as one can in a couple of sentences - sums up Colin's world view: "Anarchism in all its guises is an assertion of human dignity and responsibility. It is not a programme for political change but an act of social self-determination."

Autonomy, book of the year

At the well-attended memorial meeting for our writer Colin Ward, Daniel Poyner approached me saying he was looking for a publisher for a collection of covers of the journal Anarchy, edited for a decade by Colin Ward from 1961-1970. To an outsider, the thought of a book comprising 118 covers of a long-defunct magazine that never sold more than 3,000 copies, that would have to be in full colour, might seem deranged even by the standards of small presses. I gave it serious consideration. I am not the only person who came to politics later than the life of the journal who has a near complete run of Anarchy. The journal had influence; Colin Ward brought in writers who were exploring new ideas on practical issues like adventure playgrounds, libertarian education.... Colin had no time for what he called "tittle tattle", the internecine squabbles endemic on the left. This was a journal of practical anarchy, described by the late Raphael Samuel as "...represent[ing] better than any other publication the cultural revolution of the 1960s; and it did so far earlier than anyone else and ... more thoughtfully".
I was tempted but was concerned that the cohort of sociologists, planners, educators and anarchists interested in the magazine was small and ageing. How could I sell enough copies to avoid terrible losses?
I am glad to say that Daniel Poyner found a better way, by publishing the book with the excellent design and typography specialist press Hyphen, with what is clearly heavy involvement by Hyphen's Robin Kinross - because there is the second market, which I did not think of, those who will cast a designer's eye over the covers, mostly by Rufus Segar. And what a job Hyphen has done with the book! Every cover is reprinted, in colour, front and back together with essays by Raphael Samuel on Anarchy, an interview with Rufus Segar and an essay by Richard Hollis (who runs a small part of the Five Leaves list) on the magazine's layout and typography. That essay alone is a masterful run through of how design, typography and printing worked in those days of hot metal. The work is completed by an index to the journal by Robin Kinross, which will certainly lead some readers to start looking around for old copies.
As it happens, I have a few spare, held back for swaps for my own missing numbers. Get in touch if you have any going spare yourself...
The book is called Autonomy, the title Colin originally wanted for the journal. He was, I think correctly, over-ruled by his colleagues at Freedom in favour of Anarchy (Freedom was in 1961 a weekly paper, which then moved to three times a month with Anarchy appearing on the fourth week). The book is not cheap - £25, but that is for a large format paperback with french flaps, 304 pages and 303 illustrations, all but ten in colour. It is worth it.
With a couple of months still to go, I can safely say that this will be my book of the year. Further information from http://www.hyphenpress.co.uk/.
Though Autonomy is now available, it will be launched at Housmans Bookshop on Saturday 9th February at 6.30, together with the Five Leaves book (also already out)  Talking Green, twelve lectures by Colin Ward. Daniel Poyner will present his book and there will be contributions by Ken Worpole on Colin's life and work and Richard Hollis on Rufus Segar's design. Rufus will be there, as will Harriet Ward.

Anarchy again

Colin Ward keeps getting mentioned in this blog. Fans of his will know he edited the journal Anarchy for ten years. People (well, me and a handful of of others) are still collecting the back issues. Virtually all featured wrap round covers designed by Rufus Segar. For some time now Dan Poyner has also been collecting the series, with a view to something - a book, an exhibition, a website - featuring the covers of the magazines. The new American "journal of international political graphics and culture", Signal, features many of the covers and a long interview with Rufus by Dan, about the design process primarily. He was sent a postcard (oh, those innocent days) listing the articles and given a free hand to produce the cover. This is the first time I've seen so many of them together, other than on my shelves, making a good start on Dan's bigger project, which is about the art, but also the politics that made Anarchy such essential reading, even for those of us who were more interested in marbles than politics when the mag first started in 1961. Copies are available from http://www.pmpress.org/.