The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of the British Anarchists

by John Quail

In the account of the radical movements that have shaped our history, anarchism has had a raw deal. Its visions and aims have been distorted and misunderstood; its achievements forgotten.

The British anarchist movement, while borrowing from European ideas, was self-actuated and independent, with a vibrant history all its own. John Quail, in this first major history, shows how it was largely the fact of the obvious triumph of the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1919 that allowed the socialist/Communist stream to win the fight for the support of radicals from the anarchist/libertarian tradition. As the result, he argues, whole vital areas of working-class history have been rewritten and submerged.

The time has now arrived to resurrect the works of the early anarchist clubs, their unsung heroes, and their tumultuous political activities and searing manifestoes so that a truer image of radical dissent and history can be formed.

The story of the anarchists is one of the utopias created in imagination and half realised in practice; of individual fights and movements for freedom and self-determination. It is a story which is still being written today.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, British Literature

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Mark Richardson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now reissued - for me, when I first read this in the 1980's as a well thumbed 2nd hand copy from Housman's (it was hard to track down back then), it was a great history lesson, that helped fill in the gaps left by the working class history peddled by much of the mainstream left. A book which left an impression on me at the time.