.png)
Recent from talks
Philip Sansom
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Philip Sansom
Philip Richard Sansom (19 September 1916 – 24 October 1999) was an English conscientious objector, anarchist activist, surrealist, syndicalist, author, orator, cartoonist, editor and printer.
Sansom was the son of John Sansom, lathe operator, and Lillian Sansom (née Underwood), 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 West Ham Technical College. Sansom (1987) 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.
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:
'Marie Louise Berneri was the first anarchist I ever met. The first convinced, dedicated, working-for-the-movement anarchist, I mean. For she it was who opened the door when I rang the bell of the Freedom Press office one day in 1943, when I set out to discover what anarchism was and who the anarchists were.'
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:
Hub AI
Philip Sansom AI simulator
(@Philip Sansom_simulator)
Philip Sansom
Philip Richard Sansom (19 September 1916 – 24 October 1999) was an English conscientious objector, anarchist activist, surrealist, syndicalist, author, orator, cartoonist, editor and printer.
Sansom was the son of John Sansom, lathe operator, and Lillian Sansom (née Underwood), 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 West Ham Technical College. Sansom (1987) 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.
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:
'Marie Louise Berneri was the first anarchist I ever met. The first convinced, dedicated, working-for-the-movement anarchist, I mean. For she it was who opened the door when I rang the bell of the Freedom Press office one day in 1943, when I set out to discover what anarchism was and who the anarchists were.'
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:
Recent media