The origins of this book and the way it was compiled are curious and likely to interest its readers, old and new. In April 2001 Colin Ward acceded to the badgering over many years of his friends Amedeo Bertolo and Rossella Di Leo, finally agreeing to be included in the series of book-length interviews their impressive imprint Elèuthera was publishing in Milan and to take his place alongside such luminaries of radical culture as Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire, Giancarlo De Carlo, Judith Malina, Enrico Baj, and Evelyn Fox Keller. The format was that the interviewer wrote a substantial introduction about the subject and appeared as the sole of author of the book. Colin asked me to fulfil this role for Conversazioni con Colin Ward, but I didn’t want to, being committed to other projects. He persisted saying it would involve me in little or no work! He explained that my essay “The Anarchism of Colin Ward,” which I’d written for his festschrift, Richer Futures: Fashioning a New Politics (edited by Ken Worpole in 1999), could be reprinted unchanged as the introduction. This was definitely encouraging since it implied he approved of its content. Further—and this was really surprising—I wouldn’t need to travel from Yorkshire in the North of England to interview him at his home in East Anglia, because our discussions could be carried out just as well by letter.
And so we began work on the book. I started, I see, by sending him twenty-seven groups of questions, asking him in part about the kind of anarchist he was and his early years and his participation in the Freedom Press Group. The result was the nearest he ever came to autobiography and is the section of Talking Anarchy I consider especially valuable. After this I provided more questions, but just as often he would send answers to questions he had written himself and was also “answering.” Perhaps he had originally believed the entire interview section could be constructed in this way, but I hung on in terrier fashion, insisting on a significant input if my name was to appear as the interviewer. At the outset he had worked out the minimum length acceptable in Milan: “You will see that the Di Carlo book is long and the Freire one short (and in a larger typeface) so they are obviously flexible about length” (2 May 2001). When we, particularly he, seemed to have exhausted the obvious topics, we had to work hard to make up the shortfall of words, turning to the section on current events which concludes the book, a real dialogue developing for the first time. Throughout he would type both questions and answers and retype as necessary, cutting and pasting in the old physical sense, with many trips to the photocopier in a local shop. (He was never to word-process or use a computer.)
Our agreed typescript was then dispatched to Amedeo and Rossella, who had a translator on hand to produce the Italian version. Throughout the process, though, I had worked hard to ensure we had a good text since my assumption was that publication in English would follow hard upon the appearance of Conversazioni con Colin Ward. I told Ross Bradshaw, who was reprinting several of Colin’s works as well as commissioning a new one, about Conversazioni and sent the manuscript, which he read excitedly and said he definitely wanted to publish as a Five Leaves title even before he had fully read it. Colin’s reaction was perplexing: he would not countenance an English edition in his lifetime. Colin was by then seventy-nine and tried to allay my disappointment, several times, telling me to “remember that it won’t be all that long when you have to introduce an English version for Ross Bradshaw!” (15 March 2003). Yet Ross’s response was that he was only interested in bringing the book out while Colin was still alive.
There matters rested for several months. Then, entirely unexpectedly, Colin telephoned to say he was allowing Five Leaves to publish. Why the change of mind? He had just been interviewed by a young researcher and had had some difficulty in recalling things (although in my own experience his long-term memory continued to be as meticulously detailed as ever); and I believe he felt that what Ross was to title Talking Anarchy would be a useful tool to fob off future interviewers.
Ross maintained his enthusiasm for the book, merely criticizing its “blandness,” commenting on the number of times Colin and I had said “I agree.” I told Ross I entirely concurred, but that my attempts to stir Colin up and to introduce a little controversy had been overruled and eliminated. An indication of his benign temperament comes (on p. 45) when he mentioned the “networks of anarchists in a city the size of London who could engage in, or stay aloof from, the activities of Freedom Press.” I responded eagerly: “That’s an interesting remark! Who stayed aloof?” and he retorted: “I think it is inevitable rather than interesting.” I realized he felt uncomfortable with Murray Bookchin and his style of anarchism and quoted what Murray (equally uncomprehending in reverse) had recently jested to me: “If an additional traffic light were installed in Trafalgar Square Colin would consider the Revolution had come.” The most I was allowed appears on p. 111:
Colin, you are such a generous person, always unwilling to be critical of fellow anarchists. Yet you imply that there are “things” which “divide” you from Murray. Is it simply a matter of high theory, of style and changing opinions, all of which you have touched upon, or do you consider more fundamental issues separate your respective, very distinctive conceptions of anarchism?
To which he countered:
It isn’t that I am kind or generous. It is simply that I take seriously the business of being an anarchist propagandist. Nothing makes us more ridiculous in the eyes of the world outside than the internal factional disputes some anarchists enjoy pursuing. I try to avoid them.
(For the record, I would observe that I also continue to admire Murray Bookchin greatly.)
Working with Colin on what became Talking Anarchy was an intense but delightful experience. Zach Blue of AK Press was to comment on what a pleasure it must have been to have interviewed him. I broke to it to Zach that we had never met during the process, but was much relieved that the text apparently reads like a genuine interview. It seems easily the work of mine most appreciated by readers. That is of course because it is essentially a book by the great, good and unfailingly lovable Colin Ward.
David Goodway