Anarchy 40

Contents of No. 40

June 1964

History and the role of the trade union movement	Peter Turner	161
Anarchism and trade unionism	Gaston Gerard	168
Trade unions versus the law	Bill Christopher	175
Unions and workers’ control	J.E.	178
Workers’ control and the collective contract	Colin Ward	180
Anarchy and culture: Fernand Pelloutier and the dilemma of revolutionary syndicalism	Alan Spitzer	185
Observations on anarchy 37: Why I won’t vote		192
Cover by	Michael Foreman

CAMBRIDGE OPINION 38 on PRISON

“As one reads history, one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes the wicked have committed, but by the punishment that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime.”—Oscar Wilde

The most crucial aspect of our penal system is examined comprehensively by ten well-known writers on the subject. The burden of their argument is that prisons on the existing pattern neither deter, reform, nor effectively rehabilitate the offender. From this point, a radical analysis is made of the contradiction between punishment and therapy, and of the failure of prison to adapt its organisation to more modern methods of treatment. The means of resolving this problem are looked at, and ways of expanding the growth points that exist—for instance in group counselling and education—within the present institutional framework are similarly explored. Finally the possibilities of a therapeutic community for offenders are realised in two exciting experimental projects, carried through in detail.

What should be the role of prison in the penal system of the future? Has it any place at all in the developing scheme of treatment? What, if any, are the positive alternatives in terms of rehabilitation? The announcement recently of a Royal Commission to make an enquiry not only into our penal methods but the philosophy that underlies them, means that such questions are no longer merely academic. They are a matter of urgent practical concern, and in setting out to ask them, and to suggest the direction in which some at least of the answers may be found, this CAMBRIDGE OPINION can perhaps make a small but constructive contribution to the discussion that must now take place as to their true implications.

Edited by Philip Cohen. Contributors include Gordon Trasler, Richard Hauser, Pauline Morris, Colin Ward, Donald Garrity, Timothy Cooke, Godfrey Heaven. Also an interview with the General Secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association and a discussion among ex-prisoners at Norman House.

CAMBRIDGE OPINION 38 on Prison on sale now. 50 pages 3s. Available on order at most bookshops or by post (4s.) from Geoffrey Meadon, Caius College, Cambridge.

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HOMER LANE W. David Wills In The Comprehensive School Dr. Robin Pedley refers to “Great teachers like Homer Lane and David Wills”. David Wills is proud of this juxtaposition. He regards the writing of Lane’s biography as an act of filial piety in the sense that his own work derives largely from Lane, whom he “discovered” just as his own ideas were taking shape. A. S. Neill, too, is proud to be his disciple, and through these two men and a host of others, the liberalising leaven that has been at work in English education and the treatment of delinquency owes much to this enigmatical American. Ill-educated himself, he became a leader of the avant garde in education, as well as a highly successful psychotherapist. Yet his career was dogged by disaster. He ran a most remarkable co-educational reformatory, which was closed in an aura of scandal. At the height of his success as a psychotherapist he was driven from the country in disgrace following a cause celebre at the Old Bailey. He died a ruined man, yet none of the charges against him was ever proved. Of infinite charm, bubbling over with fun, he captivated everybody. “You must be on their side”, he said of the sick and delinquent people he tried to help, and maintained in spite of misunderstanding and calumny, that the solution to all their problems was to be found in love. Illustrated  40s. Allen & Unwin

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Other issues of ANARCHY

VOLUME 1, 1961: 1. Sex-and-Violence, Galbraith*; 2. Workers’ control*; 3. What does anarchism mean today?; 4. Deinstitutionalisation; 5. Spain 1936*; 6. Cinema†; 7. Adventure playgrounds*; 8. Anthropology; 9. Prison; 10. MacInnes, Industrial decentralisation.

VOLUME 2, 1962: 11. Paul Goodman, A. S. Neill; 12. Who are the anarchists?; 13. Direct action*; 14. Disobedience; 15. The work of David Wills; 16. Ethics of anarchism, Africa; 17. Towards a lumpenproletariat; 18. Comprehensive schools; 19. Theatre: anger and anarchy; 20. Non-violence, Freud; 21. Secondary modern; 22. Cranston’s dialogue on anarchy.

VOLUME 3, 1963: 23. Housing, squatters, do-it-yourself; 24. Community of Scholars; 25. Technology, cybernetics; 26. CND, Salesmanship, Thoreau; 27. Youth; 28. The future of anarchism; 29. The Spies for Peace Story; 30. The community workshop; 31. Self-organising systems, Beatniks, the State; 32. Crime; 33. Alex Comfort’s anarchism†; 34. Science fiction, Workless teens.

VOLUME 4, 1964: 35. House and home; 36. Arms of the law; 37. Why I won’t vote; 38. Nottingham; 39. Homer Lane; 40. Unions and workers’ control; 41. The land; 42. Indian anarchism; 43. Parents and teachers; 44. Transport.

† Sold out.   * Few copies left, sold to purchasers of yearly set only.

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Universities and Colleges

ANARCHY can be obtained in term-time from:—

Oxford, John Whitfield, New College; Cambridge, Nicholas Bohm, St. John’s College; Birmingham Anarchist Group; Sussex, Paul Littlewood, Students’ Union; Newcastle, H. D. Nash, Dept. of Architecture; Durham, Jeremy Hawden; University College, London, Socialist Soc. Bookstall; London School of Econ., Jock Young; Leeds, N.D. Society; Cardiff Univ. College, Gary Robins, Arts Block; Hull, University Bookshop; Bristol, Ian Vine, Students’ Union. New York, Columbia Univ., J. Aaron c/o P. Aaron, New Hall, New York 27; Chicago, Roosevelt University, Bernard Marzalek, 5853 South Claremont, Chicago 36.

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