How fumbling anarchists provoked a war on terror

From Times Online - By Chris Campling

The penny dreadful accounts of the bomb trials sent a thrill of fear through all who read them

The title of Hari Kunzru's fascinating Sunday Feature on Radio 4, The First War on Terror, was only partially correct. Yes, Britain's anarchists of a century ago were bent on the destruction of the state, but there was hardly a war against them. Indeed, from about 1890 to the outbreak of the First World War anarchists really were popularly seen as the moustachioed, bearded misfits of a million cartoons, wandering around holding round things with a spluttering fuse and the word “Bomb” written on the side. It must have been deeply distressing for the anarchists, reduced, in the pecking order of political agitators, to the level of the Lib Dems today.

For these were serious people, with a deadly serious agenda - the freedom of the proletariat, all that malarkey - and prepared to die and to kill for their cause. In 1894 a Frenchman named Martial Bourdin attempted to blow up the clock at the Royal Observatory, seeking to rid the world of the tyranny of Greenwich Mean Time. Holding a packed lunch in one hand and a bomb in the other, he walked up the path leading to the observatory, tripped and dropped the bomb, which disembowelled him. When a group of schoolchildren came across him, mortally wounded, all he could say was: “I want to go home. Call me a cab.”

Bourdain's frankly risible attempt at outrage sparked one major piece of literature - Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent - and a plethora of penny dreadfuls, one of which concerned a man floating across London in a dirigible chucking bombs until prevailed on to desist by his mother.

The authorities did take the anarchist threat seriously, up to a point. The first bomb disposal unit was set up - but was housed in a wooden shed on Duck Island in St James's Park. In 1892 a bomb factory set up in Walsall was busted and, at the trial, quotations from an anarchist tract uncovered along with all the dynamite sent a thrill of fear through all who read them. Drawing a vivid picture of the scene of possible devastation at a theatre bombing, the tract made great play of “the howlings of the injured, a thousand times more pleasant than the voices of half a dozen prostitutes above an orchestra”. And as for the smell of burning bodies, “the corpse of an enemy smells nice”. Strong stuff. Sadly, it now appears that the words were, in fact, written by the police themselves.

All very jolly, in a macabre way. At the end, though, a worry nagged away - if we can look back a century later at death and mayhem and laugh, how bad will things be a century from now? Will the religious terrorism of today seem, to our children's children's children, as quaint as Martial Bourdin and his packed lunch with bombe surprise for afters?

jolly good old chap, i do

jolly good old chap, i do say, those brits have such a charming sense of humor. particularly their police, right fine lads they, eh what?

Conrad, Dostoevsky,

Conrad, Dostoevsky, Chesterton and Golding are all proved cultural enemies of anarchism. Word to the wise - no anarchist acting in good faith will promote any one of these arsehole's without good reason.
They don't belong in any 'canon' except that of the damned. Fuck them and all who sail in them.

Comrade, I like the cut of

Comrade, I like the cut of your jib. Along a more contemporary list, tack on Donald E. Westlake for "Anarchaos", as well as Rob Cohen ("xXx") and Jordan Susman ("The Anarchist Cookbook" movie).

Writing up black lists is fun! Lets do this more often.

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