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The Reception of Peter Kropotkin in Britain, 1886–1917*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Haia Shpayer-Makov
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Extract

The period between the early 1880s and the First World War marked the heyday of the British anarchist movement. Anarchism was then a popular topic of discussion. Various newspapers and periodicals expressed interest in the whereabouts and activities of anarchist supporters. Dictionaries and encyclopedias provided detailed information about the anarchist movement. Novels and short stories focused on anarchist figures, while the subject of anarchism arose in parliamentary debates and public speeches.

This extensive interest was not, however, beneficial to the movement. Discussions of anarchism usually took place in a hostile context and references to it were abusive. The movement was described as “a malignant fungoid growth … on the body politic,” and its members as “the very dregs of the population, the riff-raff of rascaldom, professional thieves [and] bullies.” Their humanist motivation was either ignored or denied. Violence appeared to be the characteristic mark of both the theory and practice of anarchism. The anarchist golden age “is to be ushered in … by bomb explosions and dynamic outrages … by inflammatory harangues and attempts at ‘expropriation,’ “ claimed the author of the entry “Anarchists and Anarchy” in the 1894 edition of Hazell's Annual. Anarchism was repeatedly defined as “another name for organised crime,” and its promoters were portrayed as “a pack of bloodthirsty and ferocious criminals who prey upon their fellows for their own gain.” Other references lumped all anarchists together as terrorists and denied that they had any program “but murder.” The style varied from rational analysis to emotional outbursts, but the message was the same: anarchism was society's worst enemy and anarchists the “most noxious beasts that have ever threatened civilised society.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , Fall 1987 , pp. 373 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1987

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Professor James Joll and Ms. Caroline Cahm for commenting on this paper.

References

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4 The Daily Mail, 12 September 1898. See also The Times, 5 April 1892.

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7 Ibid., 9 June 1906.

8 Daily Express, 13 August 1900.

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11 Ibid., and Nation, 8 June 1912.

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25 See Fabian Tract No. 45, The Impossibilities of Anarchism; “The Illusions of Socialism,” in Carpenter, Edward, ed., Forecasts of the Coming Century (Manchester, 1896)Google Scholar; and “Why I am a Social Democrat,” in Liberty (London), January 1894Google ScholarPubMed.

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28 See report on Hyndman's speech in the International Congress of 1896 in The Labour Leader, 1 August 1896.

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35 Sanders, William Stephen, Early Socialist Days (London, 1927), p. 14Google Scholar. In 1901 The Labour Leader reported that more than 100,000 copies of An Appeal to the Young had been sold (19 October 1901).

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43 Stepniak was a pseudonym for Sergei Mikhailovich Kravchinskij.

44 See Moser, Charles A., “A Nihilist's Career: S. M. Stepniak-Kravchinskij,” The American Slavic and East European Review 20 (February 1961):55–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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50 Kropotkin, Peter, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York, 1971), p. 41Google Scholar. Introduction by Nicolas Walter.

51 Ibid., p. 155.

52 Ibid., p. 223.

53 See Malatesta's memoirs in Richards, Vernon, ed., Errico Malatesta (London, 1977), p. 258Google Scholar.

54 See his letter of response to the hosts of congratulatory messages to his seventieth birthday, published in The Times, 17 December 1912.

55 Echo, 10 September 1899.

56 For evidence of Kropotkin's feelings of isolation see Miller, Martin A., Kropotkin, (Chicago, 1976), pp. 167–69, 199–203Google Scholar. See Rocker, , The London Years, p. 68Google Scholar for a description of the kind of life led by most refugees. Kropotkin was not, however, the only Russian refugee to be involved in British intellectual and radical life. His contemporary Stepniak, and Alexander Herzen before him, had maintained similar links. For references to Stepniak's activities see notes 44, 45. For Herzen see Partridge, Monica, “Alexander Herzen and the English Press,” The Slavonic and East European Review 36 (1957–1958): 455–70Google Scholar, and “Alexander Herzen and the Young Joseph Cowen, M. P. Some Unpublished Material,” ibid., 41 (1962–63): 50–63. For the interaction between Russian refugees and British socialism see Kendall, Walter, “Russian Emigration and British Marxist Socialism,” International Review of Social History 8 (1963): 351–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Bax, Belfort E., Reminiscences and Reflexions of a Mid and Late Victorian (London, 1918), p. 42Google Scholar. See also Rhys, Ernest, Everyone Remembers (London, 1931), p. 27Google Scholar.

58 See his farewell letter to the British nation upon his departure to Russia (The Times, 8 June 1917). See also ibid., 17 December 1912 and 6 September 1919.

59 Mavor, James, My Windows on the Street of the World, 2 vols. (London, 1923), 2: 95–96Google Scholar. See, for example, the memoirs of Carpenter, Edward, My Days and Dreams (London, 1916), pp. 218–19Google Scholar, and Rossetti, William Michael, Some Reminiscences, 2 vols. (London, 1906), 2:45Google Scholar.

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63 These words by Goldwin Smith, Professor of History at Oxford, Cornell and Toronto, are quoted in Mavor, , My Windows, p. 133Google Scholar.

64 Kropotkin, , Memoirs, p. xGoogle Scholar. For Kropotkin's warm reception in America see Avrich, Paul, “Kropotkin in America,” International Review of Social History 25 (1980): 1–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 The Times, 28 March 1883.

66 See, for example, the liberal papers The Daily Chronicle, and Daily News, and the conservative papers The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Morning Post on 8 June 1917.

67 His book Mutual Aid (1902) centers on the idea that men were naturally cooperative.

68 Kropotkin, Peter, “Modern Science and Anarchism” in Baldwin, Roger N., ed., Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York, 1970), p. 157Google Scholar. This booklet was originally published by the London-based Freedom Press in 1912.

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73 The Daily Chronicle, 3 February 1899, and Daily News, 29 October 1902.

74 The Times, 3 and 14 October 1914.

75 Ibid., 14 October 1914.

76 Kropotkin, , Memoirs, p. xxxGoogle Scholar. Kropotkin's fame stretched beyond the Atlantic. In 1898 the American Atlantic Monthly commissioned him to write a series of autobiographical articles, despite the objection of its editorial council. Those saw print from September 1898 to September 1899. Immediately afterwards the articles were revised and published in book form as Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York and London, 1899)Google Scholar.

77 His seventieth birthday was celebrated by various circles in Britain and abroad, and messages of congratulation expressing admiration for his life work arrived in abundance (Daily News, 7, 10 December 1912).

78 The Manchester Guardian, 25 May 1912; Nation, 8 June 1912.

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80 See, for example, Daily News, 17, 18 March 1903.

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83 See 24 March 1890; 13 September, 19 October 1906; 11 January, 28 July, 14 August 1908; 9 January, 29 July 1909; 25 January 1911 and 9 October 1914 for Kropotkin's letters about the political repression in Russia. See also 13 March 1906 for his letter about the repercussions of the Aliens Act (1905) on Russian refugees in Britain.

84 Ibid., 28 November, 18, 20 December 1882.

85 Ibid., 23 January 1883.

86 Ibid., 27, 28, 29 March, 28 June 1883; 15 July 1884; 16 September 1885.

87 Ibid., 26 February 1886.

88 Ibid., 7 August 1882; 14 January 1889; 21 October 1890; 30 October 1893; 25 June 1898.

89 Ibid., 17 June 1911; 16 April, 19 May 1915 and 8 April 1915. See also 26 April 1915.

90 Ibid., 18, 30 August 1917; 9 October 1918; 13 February 1919. 18 June 1917 and 10 July 1920.

91 Ibid., 31 January 1921.

92 Ibid., 3 and 9 February 1921.

93 Kropotkin, Peter, “Anarchist Morality,” in Baldwin, , Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (originally published 1909)Google Scholar.

94 The Daily Mail, 17 September 1901.

95 Daily News, 14 August 1899.

96 Times Literary Supplement, 1 March 1907.

97 See Shpayer, Haia, “British Anarchism 1881–1914: Reality and Appearance,” Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1981Google Scholar.