Thomas Hastie Bell

Thomas Hastie Bell (1867–1942) was a Scottish anarchist.[1] He was born in Edinburgh in 1867.

Thomas Hastie Bell
Thomas H. Bell, 1888
Born1867 (1867)
Edinburgh
Died1942 (1943) (aged 75)
SpouseLizzie Turner Bell

Rudolf Rocker describes him as 6ft tall, red-haired with a bushy beard in his later years.[2]

In his youth he was a member of the Scottish Land and Labour League and in the 1880s through involvement with the Socialist League became an anarchist.[1]

While in Paris, he urged anarchists in France for an open-air meeting and distributed handbills. In Place de la République in a Sunday, amidst a big crowd and policemen, he climbed up a lamp-post and gave a speech. The police threatened him with prosecution for "insults to the Army and the law", but the authorities were not inclined to prosecute him. After two weeks in jail he was expelled as "too dangerous a man to be allowed loose in France".

On the visit of Tsar Nicholas II to Leith on Tuesday 22 September 1896, Bell got through to the Tsar's carriage and shouted in his face "Down with the Russian tyrant! To hell with all the empires!" Again the British authorities decided not to prosecute him, because a Scottish jury would probably throw out any charges.[3]

In 1898 Bell left for London and was involved with the Freedom group there.

Bell moved to New York in 1904 living with anarchist Charles B. Hooper and moving with his wife Lizzie Turner Bell and daughter Marion Bell, to Arizona in 1910.[4]

Bell was a well known anarchist who had friendships with Emma Goldman,[5][6] Rudolf Rocker and Peter Kropotkin.[7] Bell was also a close friend of Oscar Wilde.[8][9]

Emma Goldman described Bell as "of whose propagandistic zeal and daring we had heard much in America".

Bell died in 1942 aged 75.

Publications
  • Edward Carpenter: The English Tolstoi. Los Angeles: Libertarian Group. 1932.
  • Oscar Wilde: Sus Amigos, Sus Adversarios, Sus Ideas (in Spanish). Buenos Aires: Americalee. 1946.

Notes
  1. "Thomas Hastie Bell 1867-1942". libcom.org. 16 February 2007. Retrieved 28 June 2021.
  2. "Organise! #66 - REVOLUTIONARY PORTRAITS - Tom Bell, Louisa Sarah Bevington". flag.blackened.net. Archived from the original on 25 December 2016. Retrieved 24 December 2016.
  3. "Living My Life | The Anarchist Library". theanarchistlibrary.org. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
  4. Avrich, Paul (2005). Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America. AK Press. p. 29. ISBN 9781904859277.
  5. "From Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City's Great Experiment in Integrated Housing, by Peter Eisenstadt. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010, Chapter 1. The Utopian pp. 21-32".
  6. Eisenstadt, Peter R. (2010). "1". Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City's Great Experiment in Integrated Housing. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. pp. 21–32. ISBN 978-0-8014-5997-9. OCLC 871258313.
  7. Oppenheimer, Franz; Rocker, Rudolf (1942). "My First Meeting with Kropotkin". Centennial Expressions on Peter Kropotkin, 1842-1942. Tom Bell. Rocker Publications Committee. pp. 23–26.
  8. Goodway, David (2006). Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left-libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 9781846310256.
  9. "Bell, T. H. (Thomas H.), 1867-1942". Social Networks and Archival Context. Retrieved 24 December 2016.

References
  • Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America 1995 by Paul Avrich


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