The Stockport Anarchist Manifesto, 1919

A number of members of the Stockport anarchist group, the Workers Freedom Group, one of a number of groups of this name around Britain, suffered for their opposition to WW1, spending years in prison- see Anarchists against World War I: two little known events - Abertillery and Stockport, here at libcom . This is what they said in 1919:

COMRADES, Revolution approaches; are we ready for the exigencies which may arise on the morrow? Providing we keep alive within our own libertarian ranks the virile spirit of Revolution, we shall not fear any impotency of effort. We of the Stockport Workers' Freedom Group, in welcoming back our fellows from their splendid fight with the military tyrants of this country, re-assert our determination to place ourselves wholeheartedly in the propagandist van of Anarchy, and call upon all comrades to raise aloft again the banner of rebellious education and pure idealism. We call, knowing only too well the reason for our apparent quiescence during the immediate past, knowing well why our groups have been well nigh crippled as far as expression goes. The capitalist system is tottering, its upholders are seeing red and are preparing to maintain their position at all costs, but the workers also are gaining vision, and everywhere the world over the various organisations making up the revolutionary movement are becoming stronger in their forces and more persistent in their worn as sappers undermining the rotting structure of the " Pyramid of Tyranny." So we call upon isolated comrades to come together and form embryonic groups wherever possible and, where groups already exist, for the comrades forming such to act in unity with ourselves, with a new enthusiasm born of the bitter experience of the past four years' persecution, in amalgam with a earer realisation of the splendid potentialities underrlying even the deepest ignorance end despair; urging, moreover, the greater inter-linking of all existing groups (and others we hope to see spring into being) for unified effort wherever expedient or possible, and for increasing the social relations between all comrades. We re-affirm our determination to further and increase our own activities on the basis of propaganda, for which our groups were originally and definitely formed. Wherever needful let us rejuvenate and revitalise thoroughly each group organism's interior. Do not let any of us sink into fossilised apathy. We can aid one another by inter-group communications dealing with various activities carried forward or suggested. All who have the courage of reasoned conviction have a hard struggle against organised misrepresentation and suppression. We Anarchists expect resistance of the most brutal character to our endeavours, because our masters fear the progress of our ideas among the servile masses. It is incumbent upon every one of us to explain to our fellow workers the reason for their masters' actions against us,—the cause of our governors' explaining plainly our ideas and the means of attaining them, thrusting deep the truth that all complex ideas imbued with the governments' spirit are alien to the spirit of liberty and alien, therefore, to any real issue concerned with Labour's complete emancipation. Comrades, to struggle is to live; let us struggle together, not isolated ; let not the most determined individualist fear the Communism we advance,—the Free Society of Free Individuals, —based upon the order of equality and liberty of expression, voluntary agreement and social service according to ability, desire and opportunity. Forward !—for the Anarchist Revolution.

STOCKPORT WORKERS' FREEDOM GROUP. 18, Park Street, Stockport, Cheshire, (Freedom,January, 1919).