Owen Kelly talks to Ken Worpole about just some of the adventures of Colin Ward during his adventurous and varied life.
JANUARY 3 | SERIES 2025
STREAM Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | EPISODE 79
Owen Kelly | Ken Worpole
COMMENTARY
In London, on March 29, 2010, The Daily Telegraph published an obituary that began like this. “Colin Ward, who has died aged 85, was Britain's leading anarchist, a pioneer of adventure playgrounds and a champion of allotment holders and tenant co-operatives; he was the former editor of Anarchy magazine and an unlikely holder of the post of education officer of the Town and Country Planning Association”.
His life covered a lot of different territory from architecture to education. He lived “an anarchism rooted in everyday experience, and not necessarily linked to industrial and political struggles. His ideas were heavily influenced by Peter Kropotkin and his concept of mutual aid”.
In his 1973 book <em>Anarchy in Action</em> he wrote “The argument of this book is that an anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their superstitious separatism”.
Ken Worpole knew Colin Ward well for many years, and has contributed a chapter to a new book, <em>Mutual Aid, Everyday Anarchism</em>, celebrating his life, thought, and work. In this episode he talks with Owen Kelly about some aspects of these.
REFERENCES
Colin Ward: a biography on Wikipedia
Roman Krznaric: an appreciation of the chuckling anarchist
Wayne Price: What can we learn from Colin Ward?
Mutual Aid, Everyday Anarchism at Five Leaves Press
The death of Blair Peach, which Ken mentions
