We could say of Colin Ward, anarchist and former New Statesman columnist, what he said of his mentor WR Lethaby: “His ideas were too simple for people to understand them.” As the author of over 30 books on architecture, housing policy, play theory, environmental education and prison reform, Ward was a philosopher of the vernacular. Mutual Aid, Everyday Anarchy, a collection of essays on Ward edited by Andrew Kelly, was published by Five Leaves to commemorate the centenary of his birth in 1924. For Ward’s biographer, Sophie Scott-Brown, his “priority was to revitalise anarchy in the popular imagination by showing how its principles of self-reliance, cooperation and mutual aid were already part of our daily lives.”
Growing up in Wanstead in suburban Essex, and leaving school before taking exams, Ward started work as a trainee draughtsman. From an early age he espoused the anarchist cause as a fluent writer: first for the anarchist weekly Freedom from 1947 until 1960, then as editor of Anarchy between 1961 and 1970. In 1971 he took a full-time job as Education Officer at the Town & Country Planning Association (TCPA), where he established an international reputation, becoming “one of the few anarchist writers to have a larger readership outside of anarchist circles than within them.”
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