SOCIAL POLICY: An Anarchist Response

Colin Ward was visiting Centenary Professor in the department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics during the academic year 1995-96. His lectures on the history of informal housing movements were very popular among LSE students. This volume, first published by LSE and now kept in print by Freedom Press, includes all the talks he gave during his professorship.

Colin Ward built his reputation as editor of Anarchy, the monthly magazine published by freedom Press from 1961 to 1970, which Colin MacInnes described as "the liveliest social commentary in Britain". 1973 saw the first edition of his Anarchy in Action, a book which presents anarchism as a theory of organisation, examining how groups of people organise themselves on the basis of voluntary co-operation, mostly without recognising that their organisations are anarchistic.

he has widened his investigation since then, especially in the fields of education and the urban environment, in lectures and articles, and many books including The Child in the City, The Allotment and Tenants Take Over. A welcome addition to the collection is Social Policy: an anarchist response.