Pacifism, Violence and Aesthetics: George Woodcock's Anarchist Sojourn, 1940-1950 1

(For Ken Allen)'Art is antithetical to violence' - so claimed George Woodcock (1912-1995) in his opening editorial for the first edition of the literary journal Now, which he edited from late March 1940 to fall 1947.2 In the third issue of Now (Fall, 1940) Woodcock lent nuance to this declaration by announcing his principled opposition to military service, stating that recruitment into the army in wartime Britain was 'incompatible with my whole conception of morality and service to mankind, and entirely opposed to the function of the artist'.3 Shortly after this statement appeared Woodcock went before a government tribunal and received conscientious objector status, but unlike his close friend the poet and Christian anarchist Derek. S. Savage (who was granted an unconditional exemption) Woodcock was required to join the War Agricultural Committee (WAC) and work the land.4As he later recounted, from its inception Now staked out an 'anarchist-pacifist' position, and although such ideological allegiances did not govern Woodcock's editorial policy during the journal's first seven issues (1940-41), when the second series (1943-47) appeared in 1943, he stated unequivocally that 'the volumes of Now will be edited from an anarchist point of view'.5 That this orientation continued to encompass anarchist-pacifism was made clear in Woodcock's repeated meditations on the theme of violence and aesthetics, not only in Now but in a series of anarchist booklets and related publications that appeared up to his emigration to Canada in April 1949.In this essay I will examine Woodcock's correlation of art and anarchism with pacifism by addressing three interrelated themes that preoccupied him throughout the 1940's: the artist's role in society, the ethics of the anarchist artist, and the relation of art and anarchism to violence. Woodcock's views on these subjects evolved over time, and in some key instances - such as the function of violence in revolutionary change - they remained nebulous for an extended period. I will also examine the role of the visual arts in Woodcock's thinking, to account for his enthusiasm for the Polish expatriate artist, Jankel Adler, his endorsement of the aesthetic theories of Derek Savage, Alex Comfort and Herbert Read and his interactions with the Surrealists. I would argue that the reproduction in Now's second series of works of such diverse artists as the anti-war cartoonist John Olday (No.1), the Surrealists Valentine Penrose (No 3) and Andre Masson (No. 7), the Neo-Romantic abstractionist Stanley Jackson (No. 4) and most importantly, the Expressionist Jankel Adler (No. 6), all testify to Woodcock's attempt find a visual corollary to his anarchist ideals.By considering George Woodcock's evolving theory of art in tandem with his developing anarchism I hope to shed new light on the role of Now as a laboratory for politicised aesthetics during the 1940's. As I will demonstrate, by the time he left England in 1949, Woodcock had developed a unique theory of anarchist art and creativity that had an enduring impact on his thinking about culture.WOODCOCK'S ANARCHIST NETWORKS FROM PACIFISTS TO THE FREEDOM PRESSWoodcock's first sustained exposure to anarchist pacifist circles came at age twenty eight (in the spring of 1940) through his burgeoning friendship with fellow poet and critic Derek S. Savage. It was through Savage that Woodcock first became familiar with the anarchist literary doctrine of 'personalism' and that movement's leading light, Henry Miller.6 When Woodcock began corresponding with Savage in April 1940, the latter was the European editor for the American anarchist-pacifist journal The Phoenix (1938-1940) as well as an organizer for the Peace Pledge Union (PPU). That April Savage had distributed the first issue of Now at a PPU meeting in Cambridge and over the course of 1940 Savage attempted to lure Woodcock to join him in the village of Dry Drayton, Cambridgeshire where he hoped they would establish 'some kind of community on the land' made up of people 'united in opposition to war' who would farm for sustenance, run a printing press, and constitute 'an absolute community in possessions and money'. …

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