REVIEW [+PDF] Lucien van der Walt, 2014, Jared Davidson, “Sewing Freedom: Philip Josephs, Transnationalism and Early New Zealand Anarchism”

Lucien van der Walt, 2014, “Jared Davidson, Sewing Freedom: Philip Josephs, Transnationalism and Early New Zealand Anarchism, Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2014; 174pp,” Anarchist Studies, volume 22, number 2, pp. 120-121

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In this gem of a biography, Jared Davidson recovers the life and achievements of one of the often-forgotten tens of thousands of activists who built the global anarchist and syndicalist movement of the 1880s to the 1940s: Philip Josephs, immigrant advocate of interracial, internationalist class struggle, libertarian communism and syndicalist unionism (pp 17-19, 56-63, 67-68, 114).

Much anarchist and syndicalist history has been written in the form of national narratives of, for example, ‘Spanish anarchism’ and ‘British syndicalism’. Th is framing is very valuable, and often unavoidable, but struggles to capture the dynamics of a movement that was resolutely internationalist, and deeply embedded in transnational and global processes. Migration (whether for exile, refuge or work), the worldwide circulation of a radical press, and cross-country networks, were among the mechanisms underpinning what Constance Bantman calls the movement’s ‘informal internationalism’.[1]

Davidson is keenly aware of this: stressing that the anarchist and syndicalist movement was global constituted, he highlights Josephs’ role as a carrier of ‘mental dynamite’ and ‘transnational connections’ (pp 19-21, 36). He is thus able to tell both the story of one man, and of the movement, local and global, that he helped build.

Born Feival Ben Yacov in Latvia in 1876, Josephs was among the Jewish millions that migrated from the east – in his case first to red, anarchist Glasgow, Scotland in 1897, then, with a growing family, to colonial Wellington, New Zealand in 1903. Here, pioneering social democratic reforms co-existed with marked inequality and severe restrictions on unions (pp 39-43, 65, 67-68), a situation that radicals worldwide highlighted as evidence of the fallacies of ‘state socialism’ (pp 108-111, 118).

Unsurprisingly, New Zealand was also the site of a substantial ‘working-class counter-culture’, into which the now-anarchist Josephs plunged (pp 53-54, 103). Active within the contested NZ Socialist Party, he also engaged the syndicalist-influenced Federation of Labour and the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); he meanwhile imported masses of materials from publishers like Piotr Kropotkin’s Freedom Press (among them Chinese-language leaflets), and established a successful meeting centre, bookshop and country-spanning distribution system (pp 21, 53-63, 67-68, 103-107, 116, 119, 130-131). Further, he wrote for the international and local radical and labour press, gave numerous speeches and classes, formed an anarchist Freedom Group, and played an active role in anti-militarist struggles and the Great Strike of 1913 (pp 21, 106, 108, 113-123).

By the 1910s, Josephs, who made his living by turns as tailor, farmer and grocer, was arguably the country’s most prominent anarchist. By then, observers reported, anarchist and syndicalist literature was far more widely available than Marxist material (p 69), a situation for which Josephs bore substantial responsibility. However, the repression of the Great Strike was followed by wartime suppression of the left : anarchists and syndicalists were targeted and Josephs, watched, raided, arrested and blocked from the mail, found his operations and life profoundly disrupted; he eventually left for Sydney, Australia in 1921 (pp 123, 125-133, 135-140). There, he faded from the anarchist record, and from activism, passing away quietly in 1946.

Yet his imprint on New Zealand radicalism remained: if the local anarchists and syndicalists were a minority in the shadow of social democracy, they were a shining and vocal one, with a real influence (pp 144-146). This informative, engaging, fascinating, research-based book helps lift the cover off their impressive history.

Lucien van der Walt, Rhodes University, South Africa
[1]. Constance Bantman, 2006, ‘Internationalism without an International? Cross-channel anarchist networks, 1880-1914’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 84: 4, pp. 961-981.

REVIEW [+PDF] van der Walt, 1997, Film review, Ken Loach’s “Land and Freedom” (“Anarchists-syndicalists sidelined”)

Lucien van der Walt, 1997, Film review: Land and Freedom, directed by Ken Loach, entitled “Anarchists-syndicalists sidelined,” from Debate: voices from the South African left, number 2 (first series), pp. 123-124.  Note: review was deeply influenced by the review in Scottish Anarchist, no. 3, 1997.

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“Land and Freedom,” the new film  [1995] by Ken Loach, provides a moving account of events in the Spanish Civil War. Loosely based on George Orwell’s “Homage to Catalonia,” it is the story of a young British working class communist militant who goes to Spain to fight fascism. Once there, he finds comradeship and romance in the militia of the POUM [Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification — an independent Marxist group later repressed by the Communist Party] and discovers the revolution within the struggle against fascism.

The film is especially notable for its portrayal of the social revolution which swept Spain after the attempted fascist coup by General Franco in 1936. For example, when the POUM militia liberates a village in the film, the villagers organise a meeting to discuss what to do next. After a heated discussion, they decide to collectivise the land and work it in common, a process repeated countless times in those areas controlled by anti-fascist forces.

On the other hand,” Land and Freedom” does not clarify for its audience the distinction between nationalisation and collcctivisation. At the beginning of the film, a Spaniard showing films from the revolution explains that industry had been “nationalised” when in fact it had been collectivised through workers’ self-management.

Additionally, by choosing to focus on the activities of the POUM militia, Loach provides a misleading picture of the events and actors in the revolutionary struggle in Spain.  In particular, the film gives no sense of the central role played by the anarchist-syndicalist worker, women and youth organisations in making the revolution, despite the fact that they comprised the vast bulk of the revolutionary Left. Although anarchist-syndicalist colours appear throughout the film in red and black flags and neckties, and whilst the POUM militia sings the anthem of the giant anarchist-syndicalist union [“A Las Barricadas“], the CNT (National Confederation of Labour), no attempt is made to put across the Anarchists’ point of view. For example, the events sparked by the Communist Party’s attempts to commandeer the CNT-controlled telephone exchange in Barcelona [in 1937] are confusingly shown and leave the audience none the wiser.

However, notwithstanding these faults, “Land and Freedom” remains worth seeing. Fittingly, the film ends with a quote from libertarian socialist William Morris, reminiscent of the words of Nestor Makhno:

We will not conquer in order to repeat the errors of past years, the error of putting our fate into the hands of new masters; we will conquer in order to take our destinies into our own hands, to conduct our lives in accordance with our own will and our own conception of the truth.

Go see “Land  and Freedom,” a vivid celebration of the Spanish Revolution and the ideas that inspired it.