Freedom Press

Freedom Press stands in Whitechapel, a working-class district of London’s Tower Hamlets. The building sits on Whitechapel High Street, a busy thoroughfare lined with shops and market stalls. It is the oldest anarchist publishing house in Britain, founded in 1886 by a group of radicals around Charlotte Wilson. The press has occupied its present site since the late 1960s, after moving from Ossulston Street. Its red-brick façade shows signs of past attacks by far-right groups in the 1990s. Inside, the shop sells books, pamphlets and anarchist periodicals alongside radical posters and badges. The press is worth the journey because it has shaped British anarchist thought for over a century. Its newspaper Freedom was the only national anarchist title in the UK for decades. The collective published landmark works by Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman and Errico Malatesta. During the Second World War, editors Vernon Richards and Marie Louise Berneri faced prosecution for opposing conscription. In 1945, the composer Benjamin Britten and the writer E. M. Forster joined a defence committee to protect its right to publish. Visitors find a small bookshop and office above street level. The ground floor windows are protected by metal grilles added after firebomb attacks. Inside, shelves hold anarchist classics, contemporary radical texts and local history pamphlets. A counter displays the latest issues of Freedom and other irregular papers. The atmosphere is quiet, scholarly and unpretentious, with a single desk where volunteers handle mail-order requests. From the doorway, the Whitechapel Gallery’s white façade is visible across the road.