Colin Ward and Five Leaves

I started reading Colin Ward in, I think, 1973, at Aberdeen People's Press. APP was a magazine with its own print-shop, one of many such papers throughout the country such as Leeds Other Paper and Rochdale Alternative Paper. One table at APP was devoted to “swaps”, magazines exchanged with APP, and some national magazines for sale or reference. It was there I came across Peace News, which I hooked up with for many years, and Freedom. The latter listed many local anarchist groups across the country and, tantalisingly, its appeal fund often listed significant donations collected at anarchist picnics in America, sometimes from groups with foreign language names. For a young man living in the north east of Scotland in those pre-internet days this was heady stuff.

Freedom was respected (and criticised) for being the journal of record of the anarchist movement, the paper of “official anarchism”. There were brasher papers, with more exciting layout, but often with only brief lives. With Freedom you got tradition and continuity and you had access to the work of Vernon Richards, the scarily pedantic historian Nicolas Walter and, the subject of this magazine, Colin Ward. I found some copies of Colin Ward's Anarchy which, though it closed in 1970, was still thought relevant, certainly more so than the second series produced by the group that succeeded him as editor. I've spent years trying to complete the set of 116 issues he edited.

Over the years I got to know Colin's work, starting with a wonderful series of books on work, on vandalism and on utopia for Penguin Education and of course his Anarchy in Action. This is still the book I recommend to people wanting to understand what anarchism is all about. Anarchy in Action remains in print from Freedom Press, even if the Freedom empire no longer really reflects Colin's view of anarchism.

I got to know Colin – he spoke at one or two meetings in my later and current hometown in Nottingham - and found him as good company in person as his books were to read. The long defunct Old Hammond Press published pamphlets by him on housing and on William Morris and, in 1995, I became a “proper” publisher when Mushroom Bookshop published his Allotment: its landscape and culture (jointly written with David Crouch), buying paperback rights from Faber. Typically, Colin said he did not want any royalties, simply being glad the book was again available. The Allotment kept Five Leaves Publications afloat for many years after we took over Mushroom's publishing side. We reissued several of his other books including Arcadia for All, a new title Cotters and Squatters and a selection of his essays, Talking Green. Colin preferred to emphasise the positive, with no time for “tittle tattle” about the anarchist movement. The nearest he came to that was the extended interview with David Goodway, Talking Anarchy, which we published and is now with PM Press.

Unfortunately the last few years of Colin's life were not kind to him. He was unable to complete his last commission, to edit a set of essays by other writers whose ideas chimed with his. I last saw Colin at the relaunch of Anarchy in Action at Housmans Bookshop in London. I'd been asked to speak and was proud to do so. My guess is that everyone at the launch already had the book, but everyone wanted to see Colin again and to honour one of British anarchism's most influential figures. It was, I think, his last public appearance.

Our last Colin Ward publication was Colin Ward Remembered, a collection of the speeches given at his memorial meeting – funded by those who generously chipped in to hire Conway Hall for the event. People sent so much money we were able to publish the memorial volume from the surplus.

The meeting was attended by hundreds of people Colin had influenced. In my own case the Five Leaves publishing firm and the more recent Five Leaves Bookshop would not have happened without his early encouragement and his infectious belief in doing positive things, not just damning what is wrong with the world.

This article first appeared in Anarchist Voices Volume 9 number 1

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.

Colin Ward memorial meeting

About 200 people attended the Colin Ward memorial/celebration meeting at Conway Hall last Saturday. The audience comprised a mixture of grizzled activists (but enough about me), former New Society hacks, professional colleagues of Colin's from his assorted planning and environmental education jobs and people once press-ganged into writing articles for Anarchy. There were even some young people.
Ken Worpole - organiser in chief - ran things smoothly, subtly dropping a note on the podium when speakers began to go on a bit. Worpole himself described Colin's message as a challenge for the political right and the left, and all described his positive thinking, his humour, his knowledge across so many disciplines and his ability to be the first to write about issues before the public even realised they were issues. An example here might be his writing on the international water crisis of which we are now all aware. Not bad for someone who left school at 15 with no qualifications.
The star of the show was Harriet Ward, wittily describing how she set out to win Colin's affections some 45 years ago, including offering him lifts home since she was "going that way", while noting that she lived in the exact opposite direction. Strangely she also happened to pass his door when he was coming out in the mornings to offer a lift again (having, she confessed, parked up the road waiting on him to appear).
The other star of the show was Colin himself, an extract from a two hour interview with the late Roger Deakin being shown. Colin talked about the early days of his involvement with the Freedom group. The whole DVD is available from Housmans bookshop.
Five Leaves - opportunists that we are - brought forward the release of a new edition of Colin Ward and Dennis Hardy's Goodnight Campers! A History of the British Holiday Camp and we made good inroads into the copies on sale. Copies are available from www.inpressbooks.co.uk/goodnight_campers_the_history_of_the_british_holiday_camp_dennis_hardy_colin_ward_i022041.asp
Thanks to all who spoke, attended, or donated to cover the cost of hiring Conway Hall for the afternoon.