Anarchists/Socialists/Assorted Radicals Archives

Featured local business - Clubtek

Forest

SE23

Hill

I was already a regular visitor to Clubtek’s DJ shop when it was in Penge, but now they're even handier in Stanstead Road, just a few doors down from Shannon’s Garden Centre - another old favourite. It’s by no means just for DJs and bands...

The Torch of Anarchy: 1890s meetings in Southwark Park

Jul

2025

The Torch - sometimes known as The Torch of Anarchy - was an 1890s anarchist communist journal started by Olivia, Arthur and Helen Rossetti, three young siblings from an artistic family (the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti was their uncle and the poet Christina Rossetti their aunt)An issue from 1895 (April 18th) mentions that 'An Anarchist-Communist ...

Bermondsey Socialist Club 1890s

Jun

2025

The Bermondsey Socialist Club was at 78 Grange Road, SE1. This notice from 1897 lists its Sunday lectures. There's Felix Volkhovsky, a prominent Russian radical exile of the tiime; John Hunter-Watts, socialist and secularist; and future Labour Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald.The club seems to have developed alongside the Bermondsey Industrial Co-operative Society based at ...

Vietnam Solidarity in Blackheath 1966

Jun

2024

An interesting item from a July 1966 edition of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign bulletin, published to mark its founding conference that year. It includes an announcement that 'the South East London Centre for Socialist Education is organising a summer fair to buy arms for the National Liberation Army of Vietnam', an event to include an ...

Kick Out Cars in Croydon (1973) and the Croydon Libertarians

Aug

2023

'Croydon Libertarians' were an anarchistic radical left group in the early 1970s. In 1973 they planned a 'Kick Out Cars in Croydon' action involving closing Church Street to Traffic (this was more than 20 years before Reclaim the Streets tried similar tactics in Camden, Islington, Brixton and elsewhere).The action was advertised in the anarchist paper ...

Enough is Enough

Oct

2022

In our latest round up of radical messaging from the streets of SE London it's no surprize to see the cost of living crisis taking centre stage.'Don't Pay' stickers and posters have been ubiquitous recently, as the movement to encourage people who can't/won't pay their rocketing energy bills steps up. Don't pay poster in Catford shopping ...

Lewisham Diggers 1968

Sep

2022

Browsing through the interesting Reveal Digital 'Independent Voices' archive I came across mention of the 1960s Lewisham Diggers, inspired by the counter cultural San Francisco Diggers who were in turn inspired by the Diggers of the 17th century English revolution.A 1967 notice in the international Equality journal from Mike Malet of Lewisham Anarchist Group talks of ...

Russian Revolutionaries in New Cross/Deptford, 1907

Feb

2022

In 1907 the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was held at the Brotherhood Church in Hackney. The 338 delegates represented the various factions of the party, chiefly its Bolshevik and Menshevik wings, and included Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg and, Maxim Gorki. The Radical History of Hackney blog has written about ...

A list of South East London Chartists

May

2018

Chartist Ancestors is an excellent ongoing project aiming to document participants in the Chartist movement, arguably the first modern mass working class political movement in the UK, which fought to extend the vote during the mid-19th century. As part of its work, Chartist Ancestors makes freely available a databank (excel spreadsheet) which currently includes details ...

May Day 1894: Peckham anarchists in Hyde Park

Apr

2017

'The May Day demonstrations - The London anarchists - Violent scenes''A demonstration arranged by the Social Democratic Federation was held today in Hyde Park. The processionists, who did not exceed 3000 in number, were for the most part orderly, and included contingents from Camberwell, Hammersmith, Bow, Bromley, Deptford, Greenwich, etc. Among the speakers were Dr ...

Death of an Italian Deptford Anarchist (1907)

Dec

2016

'ANARCHIST DISCIPLE’S DEATHThe body man of a man found shot through the head, at Lambeth Meadow, Plumstead on Wednesday morning, was on Thursday identified as that of Leone Povinelli, Italian ice-cream vendor, residing at 25, Brookmill Road, Deptford. Emilio Nella, a companion of the deceased, who lives at the same address, saw the body during ...