by
Christopher Draper
(Following on from Part 1 and Part 2, this is Part 3 of the 'Walsall Anarchists' story)
Employing
agent provocateurs to infiltrate and
disrupt the British anarchist movement is a long and dishonourable tradition
pioneered since its inception in 1883 by the “Metropolitan Police Special
Branch (MPSB)”. Despite the State’s grim
determination to conceal its grubby little secrets anarchists always maintained
that the “Walsall Bombers” were set up by MPSB
agent Auguste Coulon.
“No voice speaks so loud as Dynamite, and we
are glad to see it is getting into use all over the place…Good old Dynamite”! (Auguste Coulon,
1891)
The Personal is
Political
Auguste’s
role in the “Walsall Bomb Plot” was outlined by Quail but little of Coulon’s
life-story was uncovered. Convinced “the personal is political” and curious to
understand how aspects of anarchist lives intertwine I researched AC’s biography.
Regrettably, 127 years after the event the authorities continue to refuse my
“Freedom of Information” requests and cynically shredded key documents (as I’ll
report once my appeal process has been expended). Despite these difficulties
I’ve identified Coulon’s origins, early politics, later decline and miserable
demise.
Talented Linguist
Commonly
described as a Frenchman and most recently by Butterworth as “half-French,
half-Irish”, Coulon was actually born in Mouscron,
Belgium in 1844
to Martial Coulon, a dyer. His elder brother, Pierre Joseph Ernest was skilled in
the decoration and gilding of leatherwork whilst Auguste was an accomplished
linguist. Studying in Florence,
Paris and Berlin, August developed
a love of European literature and acquired fluency in French, German, Dutch,
Italian, Spanish and English. Despite describing himself as “Professor of
Modern Languages” there’s no evidence Auguste ever actually held a Professorial
chair at any university. In reality, Coulon spent most of his time scratching a
precarious living from lending his linguistic skills to anyone able to supply sponsorship.
An early commission came from Hossfield’s publishing company who asked him to contribute
a volume to their popular series, “Learning
the German Language in the Easiest and Quickest Way”.
Pioneering Irish
Socialism
In
1883 Auguste was engaged on a short-term contract to teach at a Dublin girls’ school. He was
probably already radical as back home in Belgium politics ran in the family.
A relative edited Le Proletaire, which was suppressed by the authorities whilst his
brother, Pierre Joseph Ernest, was sought by French police for “crimes prejudicial to the security of the
State”. In December 1885, encouraged and supported by nine comrades,
Auguste initiated organised Socialism in Ireland with a meeting of The
Socialist League convened in Abbey Street. The group’s opposition to parliamentary
politics was outlined by comrade Michael Gabriel, “What would be the use of sending labour candidates to Parliament? It
would be no use whatever to send them to talk to capitalists and landlords
whose interests were different from theirs. As working men they would never get
anything by using a vote.”
Dublin
SL planned to hold weekly public meetings at the Oddfellows Hall in Upper
Abbey Street with the first on Thursday 7th January 1886,
entitled, “The Problems of Socialism”. About 30 people turned up and newspapers
reported, “In the subsequent discussion
some speakers expressed the hope that Socialism would never take root in Ireland and
denounced its resort to assassination, but one or two advocated the use of the
dagger.” When word got out that such unorthodox opinions had been expressed
the “Oddfellows” refused permission for any future use of their facilities.
Auguste to the
Rescue
The
next venue didn’t last long either and so at the beginning of February a rather
cloak-and-dagger arrangement was adopted, “An
advertisement appeared in yesterday’s paper which was to the effect that a
Socialist meeting would be held (where,
it was not mentioned). The advertisement then stated that that admission
would be gained to the meeting by applying to the members (who the members were was not mentioned)…”
The
report continued, “The meetings of this
association had been held first in the Oddfellows Hall, Abbey Street and then
over some public house but these resorts were “proclaimed” and thus the
mysterious advertisement not announcing the place of rendezvous was inserted.”
Fortunately,
Coulon accommodatingly offered the use of his own office space, and so, “These socialists met at the house 50 Dawson Street in
a room on the second floor…” The lecturer, Robert Reubin Lipman, concluded
his speech to the applause of the assembled audience, “…Let the capitalists and landlords, aided by the powder and steel of
their armies, unite and deny them, the labourers, their rights as long as they could,
but the time was coming when the labourers would also unite to rise and
vindicate their rights and their property!”
Family Man
Coulon
rented the Dawson Street
premises to run a language school. Advertising himself as “Monsieur Auguste Coulon, European Polyglot Institute…French, German
taught all over Ireland,
correspondence: stamp for prospectus; Evening Classes for French, Italian,
Spanish, German, 50 Dawson Street,
Dublin”.
Auguste
was assisted by his wife, Helena who hailed from Wurttemberg, Germany, where her
father, George Ulmschneider, was Superintendent of the Mauser Armaments Factory.
The pair had married in 1884 at St Anne’s Church, Dublin where comrade Lipman served as best
man and witness. Although Dawson
Street was Auguste’s professional address the
family actually lived at 9 Leeson
Street. A daughter, Helena jnr was born in 1885: a son, August
the following year and on 28th
July 1888 the Coulon’s had their third and final child, another
daughter, named Zelie Juliette.
Internationalist
The
Dublin branch endured
rocky relations with the SL’s Central Council in London which wasn’t yet as distinctly anarchist
as it later became. Matters came to a head in October 1886 when the branch
backed Charles Reuss and rebuked the leadership for expelling him from the
League for being a spy in the pay of German police. A settlement was eventually
cobbled together but the branch disintegrated the following March when Reuss’s treachery
was dramatically demonstrated.
Coulon’s
activism continued undiminished, running an eclectic outfit called Dublin Socialist Club as well as attaching
himself from time to time to whatever local group seemed most militant. In the same
month that the SL branch collapsed Coulon hosted an, “International Celebration of the Commune of Paris at 50 Dawson Street,
the following nationalities being represented: English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish,
French, Danish, Russian and American…A most enjoyable evening was wound up by
comrade Coulon singing the Marseillaise in French”. Life continued in
similar vein until in May 1889 Coulon made an extended visit to Paris and the family
departed for London.
Napoleon of Notting
Hill
The
Coulons settled at 41 Talbot Grove, Notting Hill where Auguste joined the North
Kensington SL branch. No slouch, he was soon giving talks for his new comrades
at the Clarendon Coffee Tavern where he was initially billed as, “Auguste
Coulon (Paris)”.
On 16th April
1890 his topic was, “The
French Revolution” but as spring turned into summer, Coulon took his turn on
the branch’s outdoor soapbox at Latimer
Road and in June, at Kingston market. By then he’d realised that he
could better advance his professional and political ambitions by moving into
central London
so the Coulon’s transferred to 37
London Street, Tottenham Court which was handily placed
for the Autonomie Club in Windmill
Street.
Convivial Company
Ingratiating
himself with members of the Autonomie, Coulon falsely complained that he’d been
expelled from Hammersmith Socialist Society for preaching anarchy. He’d certainly
alienated west London
comrades by his constant entreaties for violence and determined distribution of
the terrorist manifesto, L’Indicateur Anarchiste, containing
instructions on dynamite and bomb-making.
Auguste
joined the activist North London branch of the
SL that met every Wednesday evening at 8pm
at the Autonomie Club. Within weeks the branch embarked on a propaganda visit
to Yarmouth
where Coulon concluded every speech with a burst on his accordion.
Throughout
the late summer and autumn of 1890 Auguste was an incendiary presence on the
Sunday soapbox at Hyde Park alongside
libertarian luminaries Edith Lupton, Thomas Cantwell and Mrs Lahr. He was also
in contact with his Metropolitan Police Special Branch (MPSB) handler, Chief Inspector
William Melville.
Sympathy for the
Devil
On
18th July 1890
Coulon received his first official £2 payment from Special Branch but he may well
have already been in the pay of other security services. Coulon’s prolonged
1889-90 trip to France
looks suspicious. It’s clear that he didn’t really abandon his Dublin business merely to attend the 1889 Paris
Exposition as his wife Helena
claimed. In June 1889 he described himself to the Paris correspondent of the London Standard,
as “the delegate who is to represent the Irish at the Socialist International
Congress” but he appears self-appointed and certainly never returned to Dublin to report to his erstwhile
Irish comrades. He intimated to Commonweal
that he’d really gone to France
to attend the Socialist Conference and then stayed on to report on French affairs
(from 49 Rue de Billancourt). In typically grandiose fashion he’d had business
cards printed describing himself as, “Correspondant du Commonweal de Londres”. In despatches Coulon derided French parliamentary
politics, praised violence and advised English readers that, “The bourgeois shot 35,000 of our friends
in the last commune. If so many are killed this time, they won’t be all on one
side we can promise you.”
He
claimed French parliamentarians were paid by the authorities to divert workers’
discontent into harmless channels, “It
is a known fact, I say, that this party get secret money to play the game of
the government.” Coulon’s linguistic expertise and extensive political
contacts made him an attractive prospect for several nations’ security services
and someone obviously met the considerable cost of his eight month sojourn in
the French capital.
Enfant
Terrible
MPSB
files confirm that Coulon had come to the attention of the Irish Special Branch
as early 1885 and it’s quite possible he operated as their agent years before
his first formally recorded London
payment. Perhaps he engineered disruption to nascent Irish socialism. Consider for
a moment the difficulties the SL encountered securing a venue and the spying potential
of Coulon’s provision of accommodation. Consider also the branch’s obdurate
defence of the traitor Reuss despite HQ’s well-founded decision to expel him
(trusting Reuss cost one anarchist his life). Coulon also wrote to SL HQ
criticising and undermining branch organiser Michael Gabriel.
With
two major International Socialist Conferences convened in Paris during Coulon’s 1889 stay the city was
flooded with cops on the look out for collaborators. If Auguste wasn’t signed
up there and then it was likely only because he was already “an old friend”. The
anarchist historian Max Nettlau who met Coulon in Dublin in 1888 later described him as, “shady and shabby – most likely always a
rascal”!
Coulon’s Cunning
Plan
Individual
MPSB officers accepted private commissions from overseas security agencies so uncovering
conspiracies, either real and imagined, was a lucrative activity. Over the
summer of 1890 Coulon plotted with his MPSB “handler” to entrap a group
comprising both overseas and English anarchists. Auguste suggested to Louise Michel
that she might kill two birds with one stone by starting an international anarchist
school in London;
providing an income for herself and an invaluable educational facility for comrades.
Michel
was a trained teacher but her English was poor so she welcomed Auguste’s offer
to act as both School Secretary and teach language lessons. Melville immediately
rewarded him with a bonus payment and from December 1890 put Coulon on a weekly
wage of £1 as Freedom announced, “It is proposed to start an international Socialist School in London, with Louise Michel for directress.
The French Group in the Autonomie Club are taking the initiative in the
affair…”
Wonderful Enterprise
The
school was a prestigious project with a prospectus designed by Walter Crane. Kropotkin,
Malatesta and William Morris all served on the steering committee and educational
pioneer Margaret McMillan was amongst the teaching staff. In the New Year Commonweal confirmed that, “We have received a notice from Comrade
Coulon that the International
Socialist School…has
opened at the Autonomie Club, 6
Windmill Street, Tottenham Court Road, and he makes an
appeal to all Socialists in the neighbourhood to send their children.”
A
few weeks later Commonweal revealed,
“The Committee have now secured large and commodious premises in the
neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road. Funds however are urgently needed and
subscriptions should be sent to A Coulon, Secretary…” The new premises were 19 Fitzroy Street and
Auguste offered patrons, “A portrait
group of teachers and scholars”. Margaret McMillan provides a colourful snapshot
of one of Coulon’s lessons, “Louise had just finished teaching the piano and
Coulon, her assistant was teaching French, (behind Coulon) stood the blackboard
with its terrible pictures; the Chicago Anarchists hanging by the neck”!
Incendiary Anarchist
As
School Secretary, Coulon had artfully placed himself at the hub of a network not
only able to harvest contact details of exiled anarchists but as the advert
makes clear, also enabled to “legitimately” photograph children, parents and
staff. Throughout 1891 Coulon carried his fiery torch of anarchy far beyond the
school walls, advising Fred Charles that robbery is the anarchist answer to
poverty. Commonweal readers were
directed to launch an immediate General Strike and visiting Norwich, Auguste insisted workers, “PAY NO RENT!” Coulon also started
teaching chemistry lessons at the Berners Street Club dedicated to explosives
and bomb-making and ever a friend in need, he asked his Walsall comrades to find
employment for Victor Cails.
Springing the Trap
Coulon
was overcome by his own importance and by October 1891 his school colleagues had
grown to resent his high-handed behaviour and suspect his incendiary lessons and
before the end of the year he was asked to leave. By then his Walsall
bomb-making plot was well advanced but it was imperative it bore fruit before he
was exposed. On December 5th he despatched Battolla to Walsall to speed things up but when Giovanni complained
of the inadequacy of their crude efforts it was clear to Coulon that it was risky
to await a satisfactory completion so in the New Year the trap was prematurely
sprung. On 6th
January 1892 Joe Deakin was lured down to London and arrested by waiting officers with
the other “conspirators” picked up over succeeding days.
State Conspiracy
When
the trial opened and Coulon didn’t appear his erstwhile comrades realised he’d
set them up. Lying to Parliament, the Home Secretary insisted that the State
never, ever employed agent provocateurs! When the defence solicitor questioned Inspector
Melville, “witness declined to say
whether he had paid a man named Coulon for information in this case. – The
Judge ruled that in the interest of the public service he need not do so.”
Three
years later a disgruntled secret policeman let the cat out of the bag and detailed
to reporters the mechanism of State complicity, “All information that Coulon supplied was taken possession of by Mr
Melville, who submitted it to Mr Anderson, the Assistant Commissioner of
Police, Anderson would direct what action was to be taken in the matter…In
serious cases every iota of information has to be reported to the Assistant
Commissioner….during the course of the formation of the plot we have been
discussing the Assistant Commissioner was in possession of all its various
phases. And he in his turn was responsible to one man only, the Home
Secretary.”
Nice Little Earner
Two
anarchist “conspirators” were found not guilty but the rest were given long
jail sentences, one sent down for five years and the remaining three given
ten-year sentences. Coulon got a £4 bonus from Melville for the arrests and a
250% weekly pay increase during the four month prosecution period.
Coulon
attempted to shift blame for the betrayal onto other comrades. When he was
called to account at the Autonomie Club on January 10th he insisted his
money didn’t originate from Melville but, “like all anarchists I live by
plunder!” It didn’t wash and he was expelled.
Meanwhile,
Commonweal’s editor, David Nicoll, campaigned for the release of his imprisoned
comrades and collected evidence of Coulon’s guilt. Just as Nicoll was about to publish
the police swooped, smashed up Commonweal’s
printing equipment and imprisoned him for a year and a half. Utterly
shameless and adding insult to injury, Coulon went on the offensive and distributed
a series of handbills denouncing Nicoll as a police agent!
“Innocent Victims”
The
cover of David Nicoll’s twenty-page account of the conspiracy proclaims, “Innocent Men in Penal Servitude” but the
Walsall Four were not innocent; they did conspire to make bombs. Neither were
they prosecuted to the full extent of the law as the maximum sentence allowable
was fourteen years. George Cores, at a subsequent Walsall
protest meeting, publicly declared the men, “innocent victims of a plot deliberately got up that they might be
entrapped”. They were not innocent
but they were entrapped, this severely mitigated their culpability and should
have greatly reduced their sentences. With cruel, unacknowledged irony, Mr
Justice Hawkins recognised this in granting Deakin a reduced sentence on the
explicit basis, “that he thought Deakin
had been the dupe and the victim”. In truth, all four men were entrapped by
Coulon and duped into manufacturing “bombs for Russia” yet the judge readily
acceded to MPSB’s demands to suppress Auguste’s key role in the conspiracy.
Cails
and Battolla had undoubtedly indulged in loose talk at the Autonomie which
Coulon had creatively exploited to link them with Charles and Deakin who had
the means to provide practical effect to bomb-making. Once the conspiracy was
sufficiently advanced searches and arrests were made by police without
warrants, scare stories of the imminent threat of anarchist outrages were “leaked”
to the press, the prisoners were then denied visitors and writing materials,
provided with minimal food and confined in substandard conditions.
Deakin
was induced to confess to conspiracy by a clever combination of whisky, cigars,
threats and straightforward lies. During the trial the cynically selected
judge, “Hanging Hawkins” systematically turned a deaf ear to all mention of
police transgressions. All manner of prejudicial material was introduced into
Court to associate, in the jury’s minds, the accused with the wildest of
terrorist declarations. The police were even permitted to present their own
bombs to the jury as apparent proof of the anarchists’ intentions. Despite the
absence of any actual explosives, the law, recently enacted to convict Fenians,
meant the remotest association with explosives, such as the coil of miner’s
fuse found at the Socialist Club had to be justified by the accused in order to
prove innocence – an outrageous reversal of the established principle of presumed
innocence. Legally the men were guilty but the whole process was biased; as
convinced anarchists the Walsall Four could have expected nothing different.
Snivelling Coward
Coulon’s
next enterprise was the revived publication in London in May 1893 of a fiery
French language journal, L’ International, designed to
attract militant subscribers whose names and contact addresses would be handed
on to the authorities. Unfortunately one of his targets, the militant anarchist
hairdresser Louis Matha, realised who was behind the venture and warned continental
comrades through the pages of La Revolte. Once again Coulon attempted
to bluff it out and challenged him to a duel but failed to turn up when Matha
accepted. Meanwhile, Coulon’s war of attrition with David Nicoll (lately
released from jail), continued, as Nicoll shrewdly observed of L’International,
“Incendiary sheets of this kind
represent not Anarchy but Scotland Yard.”
Good Year for the
Grass
In
1894 Coulon sent out flyers soliciting subscribers to a relaunch of the International School which had recently closed. Renamed,
Ecole
Anarchiste Industrielle, pupils were offered free tuition and print-training
which would enable the enterprise to undertake commercial work to finance the
school. Simultaneously, Coulon issued handbills advertising an unconnected, “Institute of Teachers” providing correspondence
courses in “English, Classics, Modern and Oriental Languages”. Addressed from
his home at 85, Sistova Road, Balham Coulon claimed to be working in association
with a couple of intriguing characters, Hugh H Johnson the Principal of
Liverpool’s pioneering “Moslem Institute” and “Major Foster, Royal Artillery,
Professor of Fortifications”. Neither venture got off the ground, so carry on
spying!
Worth a Bonus!
The
spring of 1894 brought Auguste another couple of bonus payments although it’s
not clear what he did to deserve them. It’s said Coulon had a hand in the April
12 arrest of the fugitive Meunier and probably also the capture two days later
of Polti and Farnara and he openly boasted of trailing Martial Bourdin before
he blew himself up. Coulon also found time to fire off a letter informing the
Italian authorities that two anarchists they sought, Malato and Malatesta could
be found in the city of Massa Carrara.
Coulon
told the Pall Mall Gazette, “The
Anarchists feel the London
police hold them in the hollow of their hands. Doubtless those that have their
misgivings about being watched are correct in their apprehensions. There are
few whose dossiers are not filed at Scotland Yard.” Auguste romanticised
but probably didn’t exaggerate when, in February 1894 he informed the Morning
Leader, “I am in the service of the
International Secret Police, which is subsidised by the Russian, German and
French governments”.
Amazingly,
Coulon wasn’t yet entirely abandoned by comrades and in 1895 two anarchists on
the run from continental police stayed with him for a while in Balham. Charles
Lutz, a Swiss anarchist also known as “Latour” and the Italian “illegalist”
Amilcar Pomati and remarkably, both emerged unscathed.
Spent Force
In
1897 Coulon was still on a £1 a week retainer from Melville, obliged to stoke
dissent and supply occasional tit-bits so on July 10 he tried to wind up Max
Nettlau who had temporarily fallen out with David Nicoll. “I knew that first week you were in Dublin that you belonged to the Austrian
police…I never told anyone but the late William Morris…Now your “Dear” Nicoll
is doing a good thing exposing you…” Nettlau was unruffled and nobody took
any notice.
Coulon’s
blood money only stopped when Melville retired from the MPSB at the end of 1903.
By then Auguste had received over £800 plus expenses from MPSB and had long abandoned
all pretence of employment as “Professor of Languages”. He was living at 97 Cathles Road,
Streatham and touting for business as a self-employed “Painter & Decorator”
but couldn’t even get that business off the ground and settled for putting up wallpaper
for another tradesman.
Impoverished
and long since deserted by his wife, who’d gone to live with their daughter
Zelie and her husband in Halifax, in 1923 Auguste Coulon, aged 78, died in
Wandsworth Workhouse of “Cardio Vascular Degeneration” and was buried in
Wandsworth Cemetery.
Christopher
Draper (December
2017)
