Lawrence Storione

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Lawrence Storione (1867–1922) was a Fife miner and political figure. He is best known for founding the Anarchist Communist League in Cowdenbeath, Scotland.

Life[edit]

Apparently the son of the Italian stonemason Felix Storione and Philomena Moir (or Noir), and a French citizen according to the United Kingdom Census 1901, Lawrence Storione worked as a miner in Italy, France, Belgium and the west of Scotland.[1] In 1908, he settled in Lumphinnans, Fife, after fleeing France dressed as a woman.[2] He married Annie Cowan whom he met whilst living in Hamilton, Lanarkshire in 1900. They named their children Annie, Germinal, Libertie, Autonomie, Grace and Anarchie.[3]

He was injured in a pit accident during the First World War.

He died in 1922.

Political Activity[edit]

Storione founded the Fife Anarchist Communist League in Cowdenbeath, which 'preached a heady mixture of De Leonist Marxism and the anarchist teachings of Kropotkin and Stirner, a libertarian communism which was fiercely critical of the union.'[3]

The League ran a bookshop in Cowdenbeath and his eldest daughter, Annie, ran the Proletarian Sunday School which used the Industrial Workers of the World's Little Red Songbook.[4]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Dictionary of Labour Biography, Volume XII, Ed. Gildart and David Howell, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-96873-5, page 182.
  2. ^ Communist Women in Scotland, Neil C. Rafeek, 2008, p. 28.
  3. ^ a b Little Moscows: Communism and Working-Class Militancy in Inter-War Britain, Stuart Macintyre, Croom Helm, 1980, ISBN 978-0-7099-0083-2, page 54.
  4. ^ Red Scotland!: The Rise and Fall of the Radical Left, C. 1872 to 1932, Cora Kaplan, William Kenefick, Edinburgh University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-7486-2518-6, ISBN 978-0-7486-2518-5, page 163.

External links[edit]