An Infantile Disorder? Youth, Childhood, and the British Anarchist Movement During the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939

This article examines the attitudes of the British anarchist movement toward youth and childhood during the Spanish Civil War. Anarchists, through the philosophy of integral education, placed high emphasis on the capacity of children to reject bourgeois hegemonic norms and flourish individually. There was a tension, however, between a liberationist and an instrumentalist conception of childhood. The article looks at how the movement drew on stereotypes of vulnerable children to raise money in support of children's colonies in Spain and how life was organized within the colonies themselves. It also investigates the activities of the anarchist youth movement within Britain. Older anarchists frequently ignored or derided the efforts of younger activists to build the movement, underestimating their contribution to the struggle against fascism.