Philip Sansom

Philip Sansom
Photo of Sansom published 1945
Born
Philip Richard Sansom

(1916-09-19)19 September 1916
Died24 October 1999(1999-10-24) (aged 83)
London, England
Occupation(s)Writer and editor
MovementAnarchist movement

Philip Richard Sansom (19 September 1916 – 24 October 1999) was an English conscientious objector, anarchist, surrealist, writer, cartoonist and activist.[1][2]

Early life and education

Sansom was the son of John Sansom, lathe operator, and Lillian Sansom (née Underwood), occupation unknown, who lived in Hackney, London. He later lived in Wandsworth in south London.[3] Having been influenced by Education through art by Herbert Read,[4] the acclaimed art historian, he trained as a commercial artist in West Ham Technical College. Sansom (1987) recalled that at the time, in 1936, Read was ‘already established as England’s leading writer on modern art in all its facets’ and that his books: '“The meaning of art”, “Art and industry” and “Art and society” were almost required reading for my generation of art students'.[5] After Sansom left art college, he worked as a commercial artist.

Second World War

During the Second World War Sansom worked on the land as a registered conscientious objector.[6] In 1943, having moved back to London, he encountered anarchists and surrealists.[7] In the following year he was living in what he called a 'ramshackle studio' in Camden Town, when he was invited to join the Anarchist Federation. Shortly after he had moved in, he was asked if he would mind if a comrade came to live with him.[8] The comrade turned out to be John Olday, a brilliant idiosyncratic deserter from the Royal Pioneer Corps who was an anarchist activist, an author and, like Sansom, a cartoonist. Oldway was English. However, he had grown up in Germany, where he became German-speaking and where he was extremely politically active. He fled the country to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. Now in London, he was contributing articles and cartoons to War Commentary. But more substantially he was surreptitiously producing on the kitchen table of the studio his monthly Forces Newsletter which he distributed to the network of two hundred soldiers, sailors and airmen of War Commentary that he had established.[9]

By the beginning of October 1944, Sansom and peace activist Laurie Hislam set off on a tour to promote Oldway's collection of drawings, The March to Death,[10] which, by the end of the war, sold 10,000 copies.[11] And, like Olday, he contributed articles and cartoons to War Commentary. However, Sansom also joined Marie Louise Berneri, Vernon Richards and John Hewetson to became one of its editors. After he did so, he served two prison sentences in the following year. Initially, he served a two-month sentence in Brixton Prison, having been charged with ‘being in possession of an army waterproof coat and for failing to notify a change of address’.[12] Then, very shortly afterwards he, with the other editors of War Commentary, were arrested and tried at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court, for the offence of ‘the dissemination of three seditious issues of War Commentary under Defence Regulation 39a’, for which they were found guilty.[13][14] Sansom was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, which he served in Wormwood Scrubs.

Sansom's problems with the state didn't finish with his release from prison. On the day before his release he was served with a notice requiring him to attend at 9 o'clock the following morning, within an hour of his release, for a medical examination for the army. On the 18th January 1946 the Freedom Press Defence Committee circulated a letter which was signed by George Orwell and twenty-five public figures requesting that the ministers responsible correct the injustice of his call-up for military service.[15] The letter was published on 18 January 1946 in the Manchester Guardian, Peace News and Tribune, on 21 January by the Daily Herald, on 26 January by Freedom and in the February/March issue of the bulletin of the Freedom Press Defence Committee.

On the 22 February, Tribune published the following letter by Sansom:

'It has been said that the price of Freedom is eternal vigilance and it is certainly true that if ever vigilance was responsible for any man's freedom it is for mine at the present moment. For it is clearly as a direct result of the protest made by the Freedom Defence Committee in the form of a letter published by you (Jan. 18. 1946), that the Home Secretary ordered my immediate release from prison last week (Feb. 11).

I am therefore writing to thank you for giving space to the publication of the disturbing circumstances surrounding my prosecution and to be asked to be allowed to express through your columns my hearfelt gratitude to the Committtee and the twenty-six signatories of the letter for so willingly giving their support in my defence.'[16]

Post Second World War

After the war Sansom worked as a journalist, and as the editor of Sewing Machine Times and the Loading Machine Times. He also worked as a comic-strip artist, in which capacity he championed surrealism. In 1951 he promoted syndicalism with his pamphlet ‘Syndicalism: The workers’ next step’.[17] In 1952 he, with Albert Grace, Albert Meltzer and Donald Rooum, launched The Syndicalist, which he printed.[18]

By 1953, the London Anarchist Group concluded that it needed a club. Sansom took a leading role in advancing the idea. And on 20th of the following February Freedom announced that 'it has been decided to call the Club the Malatesta Club', after Errico Malatesta, the Italian anarchist. A cellar was located in Holborn. Chairs and tables were purchased, a cooker was installed, a sink was plumbed in and the cellar was painted. The club opened on 1st May 1954.[19]

In 1978, as a member of the British Surrealist Group, Sansom enabled Freedom Press to publish the pamphlet Surrealism The hinge of history by Conroy Maddox, Pauline Drayson and John Welson.[20] He collaborated with the surrealist journal Free Unions Libres, a collection of texts by French and English surrealists which was edited by Simon Watson Taylor.[21] And he helped to run the London Gallery of E. L. T. Mesens.

Sansom was a charismatic orator at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, and elsewhere in the 1950s and 1960s.[1]

Notes

  1. ^ a b Rooum, Donald (15 November 1999). "Philip Sansom". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  2. ^ Pilgrim, John (3 November 1999). "Obituary: Philip Sansom". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-05-26. Retrieved 21 June 2021.
  3. ^ Ward in Ward and Goodway 2014, originally 2003, p. 39.
  4. ^ Philip Sansom
  5. ^ Sansom 1987.
  6. ^ Ancestry.com documents that in 1939 Sansom was living with his widowed mother in a caravan on a farm in Uckfield, Sussex.
  7. ^ Ward in Ward and Goodway, 2014, originally 2003, 39.
  8. ^ Sansom 1977.
  9. ^ Sansom 1977 recalled: 'Every serving member of the forces who wrote in for literature received, in due course, a copy of John's Forces Newsletter which spelt out in greater depth and detail the subversive anarchist anti-war message.'
  10. ^ Olday 1943.
  11. ^ Richards 1977.
  12. ^ Ward 1995.
  13. ^ Honeywell 2015.
  14. ^ The funds to cover the legal costs for the editors were raised by the Freedom Press Defence Committee.
  15. ^ The letter is reprinted in Orwell 1998, pp. 48-49.
  16. ^ The letters is reprinted in Orwell 1998, p. 49
  17. ^ Excerpts of his pamphlet have been republished in Graham 2009.
  18. ^ There are two accounts of The Syndicalist. Ward, in War and Goodway 2014, originally 2003, p. 46 described it as 'a supplement' to Freedom. Rosemont 2015, p. 510 described it as 'a newspaper' of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Committee. Barberis, McHugh and Tyldesley observed that 'The ASC [Anarcho-Syndicalist Committee] was a propaganda group which ran The Syndicalist monthly for a year. It subsequently appears to have united with a group producing a similar journal and was the precursor to the Black Flag group ....' p. 420.
  19. ^ Sansom, 1986 p. 34. See also Heath, Nick. n.d. The Malatesta Club..
  20. ^ Levy 2003, p. 135.
  21. ^ See Simon Watson Taylor (2002).

References

  • Barberis, Peter; McHugh, John; Tyldesley, Mike, eds. (2000). "418 Anarcho-Syndicalist Committee (ASC)". Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations. London: Pinter. ISBN 1-85567-264-2. Retrieved 19 June 2025.
  • Graham, Robert (2009). Anarchism A documentary history Volume Two The emergence of the new anarchism (1939-1977). Montréal: Black Rose Books. ISBN 978-1-55164-311-3.
  • Honeywell, Carissa (2015). "Anarchism and the British warfare state: The prosecution of the War Commentary Anarchists, 1945". International Review of Social History. 60 (2): 257-284. doi:10.1017/S0020859015000188. Retrieved 21 June 2024.
  • Levy, Silvano (2003). The scandalous eye The surrealism of Conroy Maddox. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 0-85323-559-7. Retrieved 13 June 2025.
  • Olday, John (1943). The March to Death. London: Freedom Press.
  • Orwell, George (1998). Davison, Peter; Angus, Ian; Davison, Sheila (eds.). Smothered under journalism 1946. London: Secker & Warburg. ISBN 0-436-20556-4. Retrieved 14 May 2025.
  • Richards, Vernon (1977). "Recollections of the wartime years" (PDF). Freedom. 38 (17): 10-14. Retrieved 12 June 2025.
  • Rosemont, Franklin (2015). Joe Hill The IWW & the making of a revolutionary workingclass counterculture (Second ed.). Oakland, California: PM Press. ISBN 978-1-62963-119-6.
  • Sansom, Philip (1986). "Freedom Press and the anarchist movement in the '50s and 60's". Freedom / A hundred years October 1886 to October 1986. London: Freedom Press. ISBN 0-900384-35-2.
  • Sansom, Philip (1977). "Printing sedition" (PDF). Freedom. 38 (17): 15. Retrieved 12 June 2025.
  • Sansom, Philip (1987). "Surprise, surprise! A curate's egg!". The Raven Anarchist Quarterly. 1 (3): 267-279. ISSN 0951-4066.
  • Ward, Colin (1995). "Witness for the Prosecution". The Raven: Anarchist Quarterly. 29 (8): 57-60. Retrieved 13 May 2025.
  • Ward, Colin; David, Goodway (2014). Talking anarchy. Oakland, California: PM Press. ISBN 978-1-60486-812-8.


Publications

1950s

  • Syndicalism: The Workers' Next Step. London: Freedom Press. 1951.

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

  • "Anarchists against hanging" in Rooum, Donald (2016, originally c.1993), "What is anarchism An Introduction". Second edition. Edited by Vernon Richards. PO Box 23912, Oakland, California: PM Press. ISBN 978-1-62963-146-2.
  • With Bill Christopher, Jack Robinson and Peter Turner, "The relevance of anarchism". in Rooum, Donald (2016 originally c.1993), "What is anarchism An Introduction". Second edition. Edited by Vernon Richards. PO Box 23912, Oakland, California: PM Press. ISBN 978-1-62963-146-2.

Archives

See also

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