Storione, Lawrence 1867-1922

Lawrence Storione was the son of the Italian stonemason Felix Storione and Philomena Moir (or Noir). He was born in Italy in 1867 and worked as a miner in Italy, France, Belgium and the west of Scotland before settling in Lumphinnans in 1908. It appears he had French citizenship, according to the 1901 census. He married Annie Cowan whom he met whilst living in Hamilton, Lanarkshire in 1900. He appears to have become an anarchist whilst on the continent and to have had a wide education and culture. His coming to the pit village of Lumphinnans and his employment at No1 pit there had consequences for revolutionary ideas among the miners in that area. He soon set up an Anarchist Communist League which, according to Stuart MacIntyre in his Little Moscows: Communism and working –class militancy in inter-war Britain (1980) “preached a heady mixture of De Leonist Marxism and the anarchist teachings of Kropotkin and Stirner, a libertarian communism which was fiercely critical of the union”. Among those who appeared to have joined the League were the miners Abe and Jim Moffat and Robert (Bob) Selkirk. All three were to join the Communist Party in 1922, Abe Moffat having an important position within it and Selkirk serving as a CP town councillor in Cowdenbeath for 24 years. In his anarchist years, Selkirk had been a member of a Scottish branch of the IWW, and publicly polemicised against Guy Aldred’s rejection of workshop organisation, as well as denouncing Kropotkin for his pro- First World War position.

Storione’s children were given good revolutionary names: Armonie, Anarchie, Autonomie, Germinal and Libertie! The sole exception to this was his daughter Annie and she was a leading light in a Proletarian Sunday School in Cowdenbeath, far more radical than the Sunday School set up in the area by the Independent Labour Party. According to Abe Moffat, Storione was “very short in height”. Bob Selkirk wrote that the League sold copies of Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, Stirner’s The Ego and His Own, and De Leon’s Two Pages From Roman History. The main slogan of the League was, again according to Selkirk, “Trade Unions are bulwarks of capitalism and all Trade Union leaders are fakirs”.

Both Abe Moffat and Selkirk mention Storione as an inspiration. However as members of a Party that was virulently anti-anarchist they had to re-write history. So for Moffat, Storione, (remembered as Storian in his book) was no longer an anarchist but “an ardent Communist,” who had convinced he and his brother Jim to a militant anti-capitalist position (My Life With The Miners, 1967).

Selkirk is a little more truthful, mentioning the League and Storione’s initiative in founding it. On the League’s critique of the trade unions Selkirk remarks that: “We thus sowed defeatism and pessimism instead of strengthening the organisations of the workers. Actually most of the members of this Branch became successful businessmen, accountants, dance band leaders, insurance agents, etc. They had lost faith in the workers” (Bob Selkirk, The Life of a Worker, 1967). This requires further investigation as to whether this is true, bearing in mind that members of the League like Selkirk himself, went on to be founders of the Communist Party in Fife.

The League set up a bookshop in nearby Cowdenbeath in 1916, as the result of the subscriptions of twelve workers subscribing £24 each. It sold Capital, Ancient Society and other Charles Kerr publications. “We sold anything considered progressive, even “The Strike of A sex”. We sold the anti-war literature of the time and became familiar with police warrants and police searching of our houses” (Selkirk).

Storione and the League surely deserve further historical investigation, buried as they were by an “official” version of working class history as purveyed by the Communist Party.

Lawrence Storione died in 1922 after a pit accident invalided him during World War One.

NICK HEATH
Sources: works mentioned in main text. Information on Lawrence's parents and his marriage was provided by a relative of Lawrence's