Anarchist conference in Liverpool 1913

A conference of anarchists was held yesterday at Liverpool. The proceedings in the morning and afternoon were conducted in private. They were entirely taken up with suggestions for propaganda work. At night a public meeting was held at which the doctrines of anarchy were expounded at considerable length.

Mr Woollen, of Liverpool, who presided, said that the mass of the people generally were being converted to anarchist beliefs, a change which arose from the lack of confidence now felt in the old leaders – theological, industrial, and political. Anarchism would solve the problem of poverty and give freedom to humanity. It was not natural that one man should rule another. That was a curse which was spread over all ranks of society.

Miss Bessie Ward said the movement concerned women just as much as men. Both should be free. In their ideal state of the future there would be no misery, and terrible suffering and deaths in the mines, on the railways and elsewhere would be prevented. Even natural death would lose its terrors. People would live to a very old age, and would then go quietly to sleep and turn to rest. People would not waste their lives removing dirt, for work like that would be done by machinery which would have been invented a long time ago but for workers having to spend all their time in making profits for others.

Mr Barratt, of Glasgow, said it was a mistake to suppose that an anarchist was necessarily a bomb thrower. Government was based on force, which might be referred to as scientific bomb throwing, and anarchists occasionally adopted the same plan.

Reproduced from the Manchester Guardian – March 24th 1913