History of the Group

War Commentary (1939-1945) was an antimilitarist, anti-war anarchist newspaper published in Great Britain during the five years of World War II. First published in November, 1939, it was the successor to Revolt! (1939) and to Spain and The World (1936-1938).

The anarchist publication Spain and The World was launched in December, 1936 by a group revolving around anarchist activists Vernon Richards and Marie Louise Berneri. Following the outbreak of the Spanish revolution, the newspaper’s aim was to support the revolution under way. After the first issue, the paper became a Freedom Press publication. The latter, an anarchist publishing house, had originally launched Freedom, a historic journal of the British anarchist movement started by Charlotte Wilson in 1886 with the collaboration of Peter Kropotkine. Freedom, which ceased to appear regularly in 1927, was eventually replaced by Spain and The World. The group behind its publication helped revive the dormant Freedom Press. Spain and The World relayed news and analyses of the revolution and war in Spain and defended positions critical towards the official CNT-IWA-FAI anarchist movement, rejecting the latter’s policy of compromise. Following the crushing of the revolution by Stalinist and bourgeois forces in May, 1937 and the defeat of the Republic by the fascists, the journal was briefly renamed Revolt! until the outbreak of World War II, when it became War Commentary.

War Commentary was published during the entire war. The newspaper came out as a monthly and then fortnightly, virtually uninterrupted despite harsh conditions, air raids, the cost of supplies, and repression towards the end of the war. In a country like Great Britain, an openly revolutionary and anti-war paper like War Commentary could still exist publicly and was not forced to go underground. Furthermore, although under surveillance by British intelligence, it was not subject to direct censorship. War Commentary was the main anarchist paper in Great Britain during World War II [1], which united around its original core and Freedom Press a broader milieu, notably the Anarchist Federation of Britain’s network. Contributors included Vernon Richards, Marie Louise Berneri, Ethel Mannin, Philip Sansom, John Hewetson, Albert Meltzer, John Olday, Tom Brown, Reginal Reynolds, Mat Kavanagh, Frederick Lohr, Frank Ridley, George Woodcock, and Frank Leech. The paper also welcomed contributions from foreign correspondents, to the extent that contact was not cut off due to the war. One example was Marcus Graham, who published the anarchist journal Man! in the United States. There were of course many contributors who remained anonymous or use pseudonyms. Most importantly, however, the paper was able to establish contacts inside the British army and published letters by soldiers critical of the war and the army. Starting towards the middle of the war, in 1943, such letters or excerpts were published regularly in a section called “From the Ranks.”

War Commentary was published throughout the war, initially as a sixteen-page magazine, first monthly, then fortnightly as of January, 1942. Starting in November, 1944, when events began to accelerate and War Commentary increasingly carried news items alongside articles, the paper became a four-page broadsheet, reaching a wider audience. In addition to publishing and distributing the paper, the Freedom Press offices hosted public meetings, conferences, and debates. Alongside the group’s legal activities, circular letters to the “Friends of Freedom Press” were passed around among “workers in uniform” to establish contacts and broaden the circulation of War Commentary. Forces Newsletter, printed in Philip Sansom’s home, was a one-page flyer intended for soldiers and supporters of War Commentary in the army. These contacts with soldiers ultimately motivated a crackdown on the War Commentary team at the end of the war; even though the British government was never worried about the group’s ability to hinder the war effort, it did fear the impact of antimilitarist agitation during the demobilization. In December, 1944, searches were carried out in the Freedom Press offices and the homes of several contributors, and in February, 1945, four editorial staff members were arrested: Vernon Richards, Marie Louise Berneri, John Hewetson, and Philip Sansom. Their trial led to the creation of the Freedom Defense Committee in support of the defendants and, more broadly, to defend freedom of the press and oppose military and industrial conscription. In April, 1945, in the wake of a trial covered widely by the press, Richards, Hewetson, and Sansom were sentenced to nine months in prison, while Berneri was acquitted on procedural grounds that, under English law, a woman could not be accused of plotting with her husband. Despite the British government’s belated repression of War Commentary, the latter continued coming out and maintaining its line. After the war was over, starting in mid-August, 1945, the paper was again renamed Freedom and is still published today.

Against the War (the group’s positions)

Faced with World War II between the Allies and the Axis powers, War Commentary defended an antimilitarist and internationalist position, opposed the war, and refused to align with either of the belligerents, rejecting them both. The positions it defended from the outset and throughout the war were clear-cut: the ongoing war was an imperialist war pitting two capitalist camps against each other and fighting for their own particular interests. World War II was not fundamentally different from any other war; like those that came before, it was the product of global competition among imperialist states and among national bourgeoisies for market share and access to resources. Like fascism, democracy as defended by the Allies meant worldwide exploitation and oppression of the working class and colonies. The war in which Great Britain was engaged had nothing to do with defending democracy or fighting against fascism. The so-called defence of democracy was in fact merely an ideological veneer and political blackmail designed to paint in popular colours a war between rival imperialists. The hypocrisy of the Allies’ stated aims had already been proven by the French and British governments’ policies with regard to the war in Spain, which handed democracy over to fascism. In other words, according to War Commentary, this war had nothing at all to do with the interests of workers or humankind, with democracy or freedom.

Their opposition to the war, rejecting the imposed choice between the two rival parties, is, in their words, a “third choice,” i.e., the defence of a “third camp,” [2] that of the international working class. War Commentary’s opposition to war is based on a class position, the defence of working-class interests against all imperialisms. Just as war is only the continuation of competition between capitalist states, working-class opposition to war is only the continuation of class struggle. This assertion was made in the editorial of the paper’s first issue, in November, 1939:

Our opposition to the war is not — as in the case of the Communist Party — only recent and dictated by higher authorities. Our opposition is based on the firm belief that the present struggle is one between rival Imperialisms and for the protection of vested interests. The workers in every country, belonging to the oppressed class, have nothing in common with these interests and the political aspirations of the ruling class. Their immediate struggle is their emancipation. Their front line is the workshop and factory, not the Maginot Line where they will just rot and die, whilst their masters at home pile up their ill-gotten gains. [3]

Thus, principled opposition to war must be translated into practical working-class opposition to capitalism and the ruling class in each country. The editorial, agreeing with Karl Liebknecht’s assertion that “the main enemy is in our own country,” states that “For us, in peace or war, the first duty of the workers remains to fight unremittingly and without stint the class struggle against the ruling class in their ‘own’ country, and to join with their comrades in other lands to bring about the social revolution.” [4] War Commentary’s opposition to war is based on a refusal of any class compromise, i.e., controlling the workers, submitting them to the interests of their ruling class, sacrificing them to interests opposed to their own. This observation also forms the basis of their anti-fascism: they oppose any democratic front against fascism, refusing to sell out workers’ emancipation for the sake of bourgeois democracy, in their view incapable of opposing fascism, of which fascism is in turn merely an outgrowth. The fight against fascism is not a war to defend bourgeois democracy: “The fight against fascism is the fight against war, it is the fight against the class system which breeds war.” [5] Only the autonomous action of the working class can hasten the end of the war and overthrow fascism; only social revolution, abolishing all states, oppression and exploitation, can put an end to both threats. War, on the other hand, even when waged in the name of peace and democracy, can only strengthen fascism and pave the way for future wars.

The relationship between war and fascism in the capitalist phase preceding World War II is analysed in the columns of War Commentary. These analyses seek to highlight the link between capitalism, war, and fascism in order to identify the dominant trends of the time. The war was not only the product of capitalism, of rivalry between capitalist states, but in the current period, war was an essential feature of capitalism: “war has acquired an institutional character under modern capitalism.” [6] In the period concerned, the capitalist economy can sustain itself only as a war economy. As markets shrink relative to output, the ruling classes needs to maintain production and profits by finding new outlets, making the war economy the only feasible way out. The ruling classes are dependent on the structures of all aspects of the war economy, right down to its inherent nationalism, both economically and in terms of their political power. Yet the need to build a war economy leads to war, even as the need to maintain the war economy leads states to make war last as long as possible. Insofar as the interests of the ruling classes of both imperialist camps drive them to prolong the war, only the autonomous action of the working class can put an end to it. [7]

For War Commentary, the war economy and the state of war are the crucible of fascism and what they more broadly refer to as the totalitarian or total state. The war economy is necessarily a planned economy, subject to increasing state control. War policies reinforced the power of the state and the ruling class over workers: in Great Britain, conscription and its variant, industrial conscription, subjected everyone to the whims of the state; political opposition and worker resistance were limited by emergency laws, including a ban on strikes. Above all, in the name of the war effort, the old working-class organizations, unions and parties, became instruments of repression, submission, and integration of workers into the state. The war reveals the limits of democracy and of the opposition between democracy and fascism: the difference between ‘democratic’ and fascist countries necessarily narrows as the war drags on. [8] Hence, insofar as war strengthens fascism, it is nonsense to think that a ruling-class group representing democracy might wage war on fascism. [9] War against fascism is an absurd idea and even impossible in the sense that fascism can only be defeated abroad at the cost of strengthening the total state in one’s ‘own’ country.

For War Commentary, opposition to the war is rooted in the current state of the class struggle: “This opposition is based on an analysis of the effect on the workers’ struggles of organizing a nation’s economy and manpower for war.” [10] In Britain as elsewhere, for the working class the war effort meant low wages, rising prices, forced labour, and a ban on strikes. In the very first year of the war, wildcat and illegal strikes broke the consensus imposed by the government, unions and left-wing parties. War Commentary drew attention to the continued workers’ struggles during the war. By reporting on those conflicts and analysing them in its columns, the paper anchored its anti-war principles in the reality of ongoing social struggles. For War Commentary, the struggles unfolding on the ‘home front’ confirmed the soundness of the analyses and principles defended from the outset of the war: the war effort is coalition against the proletariat; to support the war, as did the T.U.C., the Labour Party and the Communist Party, is to support the British government’s anti-worker measures. Defending the interests of the working class in its daily struggles is tantamount to opposing the war. Strikes, as well as their repression by union representatives and the bosses acting hand in hand — not to mention their condemnation by the Labour and Communist parties — show the workers’ capacity for autonomous action and unmasks the role of the reformist unions and political parties as the main instrument of state control over the working class. This also shows the need for workers to build their own class organization on the anarcho-syndicalist model advocated by War Commentary.

Throughout the war, War Commentary defended the possibility of a revolutionary outcome to the conflict, although not claiming that this was the most likely outcome. Initially, in the face of the Axis’ domination over Europe and at odds with the idea of liberation by the Allied armies, the editors asserted the need for a revolutionary movement in Great Britain, which would lead to the revival of revolutionary movements, in particular the Italian and Spanish anarchist movements, in the rest of Europe and the overthrow of fascism. [11] From 1943 on, with the Allied invasion of Sicily, the fall of the Mussolini regime in July, and the Allied landing on the Continent in September, hope focused on the resurgence of the revolutionary movement in Italy. [12] In the same year, War Commentary saw the beginnings of a ‘strike wave’ in Great Britain. [13] The number of strikes had been rising steadily since the start of the war. [14] This, for the paper, signalled growing disillusionment with the war among the British working class and the seeds of a potentially broader workers’ revolt. Workers were ready to go on strike, and in so doing they challenged the authority of the unions and their political leaders; however, in the paper’s view, these strikes remained limited because autonomous organizations similar to the shop stewards in World War I had failed to emerge. [15] In 1944, its attention also turned to France, where an insurrection was deemed “likely.” [16] Until early 1945, War Commentary explicitly refused to give in to pessimism about the revolutionary potential of war’s end. [17] Despite the continual setbacks suffered by the labour movement and revolutionaries throughout the ‘liberation’ process in Europe since 1943, it continued to underline the signs of revolt as indications of a possible revolutionary resurgence. Ultimately, every suppressed revolt was interpreted as proof of working-class resistance and revolutionary potential. For War Commentary, the repression of every autonomous workers’ movement against the existing order rented the veil of the ‘war for peace’ and unmasked the true nature of war. When industrial centres in Germany and Italy were bombed by the Allies, when the ‘Red Army’ allowed the Warsaw uprising to be crushed, when the British put down the mutiny of Greek troops, the so-called ‘war for peace’ openly took the shape of a class war waged by the ruling classes against the working class. In early 1945, the last positive outcome envisaged by War Commentary was the overthrow of Nazism by the German people revolting against their rulers, which would arouse the solidarity of workers in every country and bring to a halt the repressive machine of the Allied armies. [18]

But the editors of War Commentary were forced to recognize that the Allies’ counter-revolution was implacable: ‘liberation’ crushed any hint of revolution and maintained order — which merely changed hands. As all serious revolutionary prospects dissipated, War Commentary repeatedly called for fraternization and solidarity with German workers. The end of the war in Europe ushered in a new period of crisis. War Commentary stressed that the demobilization phase was critical, but so was the tendency of the state to keep permanently in place the new instruments of working-class control, repression and integration developed within the framework of the war economy, with the blessing of the unions and the Labour and Communist Parties. [19] For War Commentary, the end of the war did not mean peace, but continuing class war. The newly renamed Freedom offers an apt conclusion:

Everywhere on the earth, peace has brought continued oppression, continued slavery. [...] Where there should be freedom is slavery, where there should be plenty is scarcity, where every man should be rich in goods and leisure, there is poverty. For six years of war, this is the only peace the rulers can bring us. It is a sham peace, for it covers the continued class war within society, and until this most real of wars is finally resolved there can be no real peace, where man is free not only from the fear of physical hurt, but also from the fear of starvation, the fear of convention and the fear of government. [20]

Appendix

Selection of Articles from War Commentary

Articles on the anarchist position on war:

• “War and the Workers,” Vol. 1, #1.
• “The Third Choice,” Vol. 1, #10
• “Anarchism and War,” Vol. 3, #12.
• “Manifesto of the Anarchist Federation on War,” Vol. 5, #4.
• John Hewetson, “The Implications of Support for the War,” Vol. 2, #10.
• Marcus Graham, “The Issues in the Present War I & II,” Vol. 3, #12-13.

On fascism, totalitarianism, and war:

• Albert Meltzer, “Trade Unionism and Totalitarianism,” Vol. 1, #3.
• John Hewetson, “War Without End I & II,” Vol. 3, #20-21.
• “War and Fascism,” Vol. 5, #4

On anarchism and syndicalism:

• Albert Meltzer, “Anarcho-Syndicalism, An Outline of Constructive Anarchism,” Vol. 1, #6.
• Marie Louise Berneri, “A Constructive Policy?”, Vol.2, #2.
• Tom Brown, “Trade Unionism or Syndicalism? I & II,” Vol. 2, #2,4.
• “Anarchist Federation: Aims and Principles,” Vol. 4, #13.
• “What is Anarchism? I & II,” Vol. 6, #11-12.

It is worth underlining the paper’s very rich, diversified content. We focused on the subject of war, which occupied a central position in its pages, but it also dealt with such varied and far-reaching issues as women, colonialism, racism, education, culture, agriculture, health, the labour movement, trade unionism or anarchism, whether from the angle of the current situation or from a more historical or theoretical perspective.