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Title: Kate Sharpley’s Story
Author: Albert Meltzer
Date: 1978
Language: en
Topics: Kate Sharpley Library, biography
Source: Retrieved on 19th May 2021 from https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/0zpcq4
Notes: In KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library No. 6, September, 1996

Albert Meltzer

Kate Sharpley’s Story

One of our frequently asked questions is ‘who was Kate Sharpley?’ Many

of our readers will know of her as ‘One of the countless “unknown”

members of our movement ignored by the official historians of

anarchism.’ We hope this tribute, written by Albert Meltzer in 1978 will

help to fill that statement out a little. There are more details in

Albert’s autobiography I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels.

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Kate’s Tinwear

Sixty-five years ago Queen Mary was handing out medals in Greenwich,

most of them for fallen heroes being presented to their womenfolk. One

22-year old girl, said by the local press to be under the influence of

anarchist propaganda, having collected medals for her dead father,

brother and boyfriend, then threw them in the Queen’s face, saying, ‘If

you think so much of them, you can keep them.’ The Queen’s face was

scratched and so was that of one of her attendant ladies. The police,

not a little under the influence of patriotic propaganda, then grabbed

the girl and beat her up. When she was released from the police station

a few days later, no charges being brought, she was scarcely

recognisable.

The girl was Kate Sharpley, who had been active in the Woolwich

anarchist group and helped keep it going through the difficult years of

World War 1. After her clash with the police she was sacked from her job

‘on suspicion of dishonesty’ (there was nothing missing but a policeman

had called checking up on her…) and, selling libertarian pamphlets in

the street, she was recognised by the police and warned that if she

appeared there again she would be charged with ‘soliciting as a

prostitute’ (which in those days would have been a calamity, and even

today a disaster, if once convicted). Isolated from her family, and with

the group broken up, she moved out of activity, away from the

neighbourhood, and married.

I met her, by chance, last year in Lewisham. Twice widowed, she

remembered the anarchist movement with nostalgia, and gave me a

fascinating account of the local group in the years before World War 1.

Unfortunately, she was already very ill, and a few weeks ago, she died,

I was told by one of her neighbours.

I had, though, asked her for a message to the Anarchist movement today.

Her answer: ‘Tell the kids they’re doing all right, they don’t need any

advice from me.’ Especially she praised the young women of today: ‘I

wouldn’t have had to take cover like I did if women of my day had any

guts’ she said. But she did have guts. A few only in 1917 dared take any

action in bereaved England.