In the accounts of the radical movements that have shaped our history,
anarchism has received a raw deal. Its visions and aims have been distorted
and misunderstood, its achievements forgotten. John Quail, in this first
major work, shows a history largely obscured and rewritten following 1919
and the triumph of Leninist communism. The time has arrived to resurrect
the works of the early anarchist clubs, their unsung heroes, tumultuous
political activities, and searing manifestos so that a truer image of
radical dissent and history can be formed. Quail”s story of the anarchists
is one of utopias created in imagination and half-realised in practice, of
individual fights and movements for freedom and self-expression – a story
still being written today.