Philip Sansom


Philip Richard Sansom was an English conscientious objector, anarchist activist, surrealist, syndicalist, author, orator, cartoonist, editor and printer.

Early life and education

Sansom was the son of John Sansom, lathe operator, and Lillian Sansom, occupation unknown, who lived in Hackney, London. He later lived in Wandsworth, London. Having been influenced by Education through art by Herbert Read, the acclaimed art historian, he trained as a commercial artist in . Sansom recalled that at the time, in 1936, Read was ‘already established as England’s leading writer on modern art in all its facets’ and that his books, "The meaning of art", "Art and industry" and "Art and society", were almost required reading for my generation of art students'. In the 1930s, Sansom worked as a commercial artist.

Second World War

During the Second World War Sansom worked on the land in Kent, South East England as a registered conscientious objector. By 1943 he had moved back to London where he encountered anarchism in the form of Marie Louise Berneri. He recalled: In 1944, Sansom joined the London Surrealist Group. In the following year he was living in what he called a 'ramshackle studio' in Camden Town, London when he was invited to join the Anarchist Federation. Shortly after he had moved in, he was asked if he would mind if a comrade came to live with him. The comrade turned out to be John Olday, a brilliant idiosyncratic deserter from the Royal Pioneer Corps who was an anarchist activist, an author and, like Sansom, a cartoonist. Oldway was English. However, he had grown up in Germany, where he became German-speaking and where he was extremely politically active. He fled the country to avoid arrest by the Gestapo. Now in London, he was contributing articles and cartoons to the anarchist journal War Commentary. But more substantially he was surreptitiously producing on the kitchen table of the studio his monthly Forces Newsletter which he distributed to the network of two hundred soldiers, sailors and airmen of War Commentary.
By the beginning of October 1944, Sansom and peace activist Laurie Hislam set off on a tour to promote Oldway's collection of drawings, The March to Death, which, by the end of the war, sold 10,000 copies. And, like Olday, he contributed articles and cartoons to War Commentary. However, Sansom also joined Berneri, her husband Vernon Richards, and John Hewetson to became one of its editors. After he did so, he served two prison sentences in the following year. Initially, he served a two-month sentence in Brixton Prison, having been charged with ‘being in possession of an army waterproof coat and for failing to notify a change of address’. Then, very shortly afterwards he, with the other editors of War Commentary, were arrested and tried at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court, for the offence of ‘the dissemination of three seditious issues of War Commentary under Defence Regulation 39a’, for which they were found guilty. Sansom was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, which he served in Wormwood Scrubs.
Sansom's problems with the state did not finish with his release from prison. On the day before his release he was served with a notice requiring him to attend at 9 o'clock the following morning, within an hour of his release, for a medical examination for the army. On 18 January 1946 the Freedom Press Defence Committee circulated a letter which was signed by George Orwell and twenty-five public figures requesting that the ministers responsible correct the injustice of his call-up for military service. The letter was published on 18 January 1946 in the Manchester Guardian, Peace News and Tribune, on 21 January by the Daily Herald, on 26 January by Freedom and in the February/March issue of the bulletin of the Freedom Press Defence Committee.
On 22 February 1946, Tribune published the following letter by Sansom:

Post Second World War

In 1946, with the help of Marie Louise Berneri, Sansom produced the surrealist review Free Unions/Unions Libres, the brainchild of fellow anarchist and friend Simon Watson Taylor, at Express Printers in Whitechapel, London.
In 1951, Sansom produced the pamphlet ‘Syndicalism: The workers’ next step’. He recalled that, within a 'few weeks' of March 1952, The Anarchist-Syndicalist Committee, which comprised himself, Albert Meltzer, and , launched The Syndicalist. Sansom described it as 'a small but brightly coloured little paper' and stated that it included contributions from various industries, including the docks, mining and engineering. The Syndicalist was short-lived; it only lasted a year. And it was not a Freedom Press publication. Nevertheless, it was published with its blessing.
By 1953, the London Anarchist Group concluded that it needed a club. Sansom took a leading role in advancing the idea. And in the following February, Freedom announced that 'it has been decided to call the club the Malatesta Club', after Errico Malatesta, the Italian anarchist. A cellar was located in Holborn, London. Chairs and tables were purchased, a cooker was installed, a sink was plumbed in and the cellar was painted. The club opened on 1 May 1954.
Sansom was a charismatic orator at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, London, and elsewhere in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1978, Sansom enabled Freedom Press to publish the pamphlet by Conroy Maddox, Pauline Drayson and . And he helped to run the of the Belgian surrealist E.L.T. Mesens.

Publications

1950s
1960s
1970s
  • "Foreword" in
1980s
  • "Introduction" in
1990s
  • "Anarchists against hanging" in Rooum, Donald, "What is anarchism An Introduction". Second edition. Edited by Vernon Richards. PO Box 23912, Oakland, California: PM Press. ISBN 978-1-62963-146-2.
  • With Bill Christopher, Jack Robinson and Peter Turner, "The relevance of anarchism". in Rooum, Donald, "What is anarchism An Introduction". Second edition. Edited by Vernon Richards. PO Box 23912, Oakland, California: PM Press. ISBN 978-1-62963-146-2.

    Archives

*
*
*
Category:1916 births
Category:1999 deaths
Category:Anarchist writers
Category:British anti–World War II activists
Category:English conscientious objectors
Category:English anarchists
Category:English prisoners and detainees
Category:Prisoners and detainees of the United Kingdom