Philip Sansom

Philip Richard Sansom (19 September 1916 – 24 October 1999) was a British anarchist writer and activist.

Sansom was the son of a lathe operator.

He came from the same area in London from which his good friend Colin Ward came, Wandsworth, and was brought up in Hackney.

Sansom was trained as an artist in West Ham Technical College, during which he came into contact with the published works of Herbert Read.

From 1943 he worked on War Commentary, a wartime substitute for the anarchist paper Freedom.

With his co-editors Vernon Richards and John Hewetson, he was tried at the Old Bailey in 1945 and imprisoned for nine months for conspiring to publish an article allegedly inciting soldiers to disaffect from their duty or allegiance.

He was a charismatic orator at Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, and elsewhere in the 1950s and 1960s.

Westhall (1973) observed that the position of Sansom:

Sansom (1987) (see 'Publications' below) documented that, in 1936, Read was ‘already established as England’s leading writer on modern art in all its facets’ and that his books: '“The meaning of art”, “Art and industry” and “Art and society” were almost required reading for my generation of art students'.

After he left art college, Sansom became a commercial artist.

Sansom affirmed his commitment to syndicalism with his pamphlet ‘Syndicalism: The workers’ next step’, see below, excerpts of which have been republished in Graham (2009).

During the Second World War Sansom was a conscientious objector, and worked on the land, which he was presumably required to do.