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War Commentary

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War Commentary
The cover from the 5th May 1945
TypeFortnightly
PublisherFreedom Press
Editorial group
FoundedNovember 1939
Political alignment
Ceased publicationAugust 1945 (relaunched as Freedom)
HeadquartersNewbury Street, London

War Commentary was an England-based anti-militarist anti-war anarchist serial publication that was published from 1939 to 1945, initially as a journal and then as a newspaper, as part of the movement which was opposed to World War II (see Opposition to World War II), along anti-capitalist and anti-state lines[1].

The first issue of War Commentary was launched in November 1939[2] after the closure of the journal Spain and the World and was published by Freedom Press Distributors, the temporary address of which was Whiteway Colony Nr. Stroud Glos England, where Lilian Wolfe was still living after the death of her partner Thomas Keell. The journal was produced on a duplicator and comprised seventeen pages. All the subsequent issues were published and printed in London.[3] Until 1941 it appeared monthly until 1941, when six supplements were produced. From 1942 it appeared twice a month. In the following month, and for its 100th issue, its format was changed from a journal to a four-page newspaper.

Regular contributors to War Commentary included Vernon Richards, Marie Louise Berneri (who was married to Richards), John Hewetson, Philip Sansom, and Ethel Mannin, with John Olday contributing cartoons. Occasional contributors included Tom Brown, Reginald Reynolds, George Woodcock and Colin Ward.[4]

The 1945 trial of the editors of War Commentary

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By late 1944 the British state were extremely aware of War Commentary because for some time the Special Branch and MI5 had been spying on those who were involved in it.[5] However, the state had not taken action against anyone. Then the situation dramatically changed as a result of four actions which the editors undertook. Initially, in late October they sent to the subscribers of the journal the latest issue of the Freedom Press Forces Letter which John Olday had been writing and producing. Then, in November the editors published a series of three articles under the heading ‘All power to the soviets’ by Michael Peterson:[6] 'All power to the Soviets',[7] 'All power to the Soviets China'[8] and 'All power to the Soviets (3-4)'.[9]

The state responded by arresting the four editors of War Commentary: Berneri, Hewetson, Richards and Sansom, and charging them with conspiring to cause disaffection among members of the armed forces under Defence Regulation 39a. Also, Inspector Whitehead of Scotland Yard, accompanied by four officers, raided the offices of Freedom Press near Finchley Road and searched them and the three people who were working there with recourse to Defence Regulation 88A.[10] Very soon after the raid, Berneri and Richards asked Woodcock to meet them at Camden Town Tube Station. When they met, they told him that the police 'had shown a special interest in the typewriter on which the appeal to the soldiers had been prepared.'[11] The reason they told him this information was that he had typed the stencils for the manifesto on his typewriter and that if he was caught there would be nobody else left to run War Commentary. At the end of the meeting, Berneri asked Woodcock directly if he would take over the running of the newspaper, to which he agreed.

For Woodcock to run War Commentary he needed to regularize his situation by registering his change of address. After he had done so he immediately contacted Herbert Read for support. And, within a few days they persuaded T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Stephen Spender, George Orwell, Dylan Thomas and several other well-known writers to sign letters in protest about the raid on Freedom Press. Their letters were published in the New Statesman and Tribune, and were followed shortly afterwards by the arrests of the four editors, who were charged and released on bail.

The subsequent four-day trial of the editors at the Old Bailey received significant coverage from the press. Woodcock later observed:

'All the so-called seditious writings - prose and poetry - on which the prosecution based its case were read in court, and the daily papers reported them almost verbatim, so that ideas that had previously reached only a few thousand people through War Commentary now reached several millions, courtesy Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere.'[12]

The Freedom Press Defence Committee was launched, which included notable figures such as George Orwell, Simon Watson Taylor, Herbert Read, Harold Laski, Kingsley Martin, Benjamin Britten, Augustus John, and Bertrand Russell.[13][14] The trial concluded with Richards, Sansom and Hewetson being sentenced to nine months imprisonment; the charges against Berneri were dropped as legally a wife could not be prosecuted for conspiring with her husband, about which she was reportedly furious.[15]

The court case greatly raised the profile of War Commentary and its publisher Freedom Press. However, in May 1945, during the week in which the war in Europe ended, Woodcock and Berneri changed the name of the newspaper to the historic title of Freedom without losing any readers[16] Also, the Freedom Press Defence Committee was subsequently renamed as the Freedom Defence Committee to expand its scope, and it continued to operate until it disbanded in 1949.[17]

Notes

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  1. ^ "War Commentary: Background". International Institute of Social History. Archived from the original on 9 December 2021. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  2. ^ War Commentary Volume 1. Number 1. Retrieved 9 June 2025.
  3. ^ 'VR', who was quite possibly Vernon Richards, see below, can be consulted for their detailed history of the subsequent printing of War Commentary.
  4. ^ Di Paola 2011.
  5. ^ The Freedom Press Anarchists and H. M. Forces (PDF) (Report). MI5. February 1945. HO 45/25554. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 4 May 2022.
  6. ^ Heath n.d. identified that 'Michael Peterson' was one of several names by which John Olday was known.
  7. ^ "All power to the Soviets". War Commentary. 6 (1): 2. 1944. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
  8. ^ "All power to the Soviets China". War Commentary. 6 (2): 2. 1944. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
  9. ^ Peterson, Michael (1944). "All power to the Soviets (3-4)". War Commentary. 6 (3): 2. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
  10. ^ Anonymous 1989, p. 110.
  11. ^ Woodock 1982. p. 265
  12. ^ Woodcock 1982, p. 267.
  13. ^ Honeywell 2015.
  14. ^ Woodcock 1982 p. 267 documented: 'We got no help at all from the Civil Liberties Association [sic], which had been infiltrated by the Stalinists who in 1945 were still fervently patriotic'.
  15. ^ Honeywell 2015. Berneri's fury may be understood from the observation of Ward in Ward and Goodway, 2024, p. 35 that in English law 'husband and wife are legally one person'.
  16. ^ Woodcock 1982, p. 268.
  17. ^ Goodway 2012, p. 143.

References

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