Presentation
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.”
Sources
A selection of texts on the history of War Commentary available
- War Commentary: Background
- A History of Freedom Press
- The file devoted to War Commentary on Libcom
- Albert Meltzer’s firsthand account
Other material
- Neither East Nor West - Selected Writings - Marie Louise Berneri
[1] Like Now published by George Woodcock.