This article is republished from an eBook series that has been made freely available.
By Jon Hochschartner
Born in 1875, Lilian Wolfe, whose name is spelled in different ways in different sources, was a British feminist, anarchist and vegetarian. According to George Woodcock, she was a friend and collaborator to the influential anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin. Given her residency at the Whiteway Colony, a community inspired by Leo Tolstoy, one might assume her diet was inspired by concern for animals.
The seriousness with which Wolfe seemed to regard her vegetarianism can be seen in her steadfastness to the diet during her incarceration for opposing World War I. “The anarchists round the newspaper Freedom had their own anti-war organization,” Sheila Rowbotham said. “Lilian Woolf, an ex-suffragette who became an anarchist, was imprisoned [in 1916] for giving out anti-war leaflets to troops. Pregnant and unmarried on principle, she remained a vegetarian in prison and was forced to drink cabbage water to provide herself with some nutrition.”
While I no longer put much emphasis on the importance of prefigurative vegetarianism or veganism, I must admire her tenacity in this instance, even if it was for what I see now as a mostly symbolic end. When I spent a mere 40 hours in jail for my 2011 involvement in the Occupy Wall Street movement, I’m sure I betrayed my prefigurative veganism numerous times, which I then took very seriously, at least publicly. I abjured the offerings that obviously contained animal products, such as the cartons of cows’ milk and cows’ cheese sandwiches. The former prompted many jokes contrasting 1 percent milk fat and OWS’ signature phraseology regarding the economic division of society. But I ate peanut butter sandwiches I suspect were made with honey. The bread for these also could have contained animal products. I just wanted to keep my head down.
How much time Wolfe served in custody is unclear. She “was sentenced to £25 or two months and went to prison, but there discovered she was pregnant (at the age of 40), so paid the fine and was released,” according to Donald Rooum. She administrated Freedom Press, which identified with libertarian communism, for much of her life. “For more than twenty-five years Lilian Wolfe was the centre of the administration of Freedom Press at its various premises in London,” Nicolas Walter said. “She was the person on whom every organization depends — the completely reliable worker who runs the office, opening and closing the shop, answering the telephone and the post, doing accounts and keeping people in touch. She maintained personal contact with the thousands of people who read the paper.”
When the socialist George Orwell was sick with tuberculosis in 1949, an illness that eventually claimed his life, Orwell’s young son, Richard Blair, was sent to live at the Whiteway Colony, near the sanitarium where his father was being treated. He was placed in Wolfe’s care. Orwell, it should be mentioned, was hostile to what Whiteway represented. “If only the sandals and pistachio-colored shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaler and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly,” Orwell said. “As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.”
For what it’s worth, Blair seemed to enjoy his time at Whiteway. “As far as I can recall I was perfectly happy there and even attended a local kindergarten for a few weeks, until mid-August,” Blair said. “I remember regularly waiting with someone to catch a bus to go and visit my father and, on arrival, would always ask him where it hurt.”
Orwell described Whiteway and Wolfe herself with no small amount of condescension. The community was “some sort of anarchist colony run, or financed, by the old lady whose name I forget who keeps the Freedom Bookshop,” Orwell said. For Walter, this was quite a strange twist. “How nice to know that at the very end of his life Orwell was helped by a high-minded woman who was not only an anarchist but a pacifist, and also a vegetarian and a teetotaler,” Walter said. “A perfect irony to close the case of Orwell and the anarchists!” Wolfe died in 1974, at the age of 98.
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Species and Class 