ABOUT TERRY PHILLIPS

Terry Phillips is a Welsh libertarian and heretic who wrote regularly for Freedom, the anarchist paper, in the early 1970's when it reflected a broad range of constructive and imaginative libertarian thought. Sadly, many articles were in an archive destroyed in an arson attack on the Freedom Press building. Some of his articles were reproduced in the french anarchist paper Le Monde Libertaire and The Match! published by Fred Woodworth in Tucson, Arizona.

He was a radical activist in the (then) steel town of Corby in Northamptonshire where he formed Corby Anarchist Group and was involved in trade union and community action bringing libertarian and anarcho-syndicalist ideas to trade unionists previously only influenced by the Labour Left, Trotskyist groups and the Communist Party. He was as at home at a gathering of Spanish anarcho-syndicalists as at the hippy 1972 Windsor Free Festival organised by Bill Dwyer. He was an advocate of children's rights and wrote occasional reviews of children's books from a libertarian perspective for publications including Stuart Christie's Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review. He also produced the Wildcat Bulletin which published news of diverse community and activist groups which he considered in line with his broad libertarian views. He was persuaded to incorporate it in a new paper Wildcat produced by a group (which included some media professionals) brought together by Wynford Hicks who had previously produced Inside Story, a magazine of investigative journalism. The paper was of a high quality print and design but he was unhappy about the direction of the paper and left after the first issue.

He supported the Anarchist Black Cross at that time mainly engaged in helping political prisoners in Franco's Spain. He also supported the British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign (BWNIC) instigated by the pacifists at Peace News and promoted it through his writing in Freedom advocating the withdrawal of troops in the belief that their presence was not helping to resolve the sectarian differences in Northern Ireland which prevented the emergence of an united working-class movement.

His fifteen minutes of fame came when he scripted, and appeared in, a film called Anarchists which was shown on BBC TV in October 1974 and brought anarchist ideas to a wider audience. On his return to Wales in 1979 he founded Barry Anti-Nuclear Group and was a campaigner for WANA (Welsh Anti-Nuclear Alliance). He was also the author of the section on education in Everything you ever wanted to know about anarchism but were afraid to ask produced by a diverse group of anarchists in Cardiff around 1980.

As a life-long atheist he is alarmed by the resurgence of religious authoritarianism in the world and he is opposed to any religious influence in education or other public institutions. Despite some of the unwelcome consequences of technological advance he was an early advocate of the internet and continues to support the philosophy of the open source and free software community which he sees as embodying the best of the spirit of the 1970's.

He now lives happily in retirement with his wife in a coastal village in Carmarthenshire, West Wales enjoying what he describes as the mundane pleasures of everyday life.

LINKS:

The Anarchists film can be viewed here

Archived article: Anarchism and Economics

© Terry Phillips 2008-2025 .