Confessions Of A Non-Violent Revolutionary: Bean Stew, Blisters, Blockades and Benders
by Chris Savoury 
Clairview Books £12.99

CONFESSIONS of a Non-violent Revolutionary is a political memoir that manages to cover all bases in that it is gentle, honest, funny, sad and inspiring.    

Determined to fight for a peaceful, socially just and ecologically sustainable society, Chris Savoury dropped out of Oxford University in the early ’80s and embarked upon a journey that was to see him living on peace camps, experimenting in communal living and organic allotments, touring in mining communities as part of an agitprop theatre group and working in a radical bookshop.

Although he comes into contact with the organised left and often shares many of their sentiments he eschews tight ideology and later encounters with both Quakerism and, more recently, Unitarianism see his beliefs anchored more in overtly spiritual paths.

Savoury excels at bringing to life an overtly politicised counterculture that at its height in the 1980s probably involved hundreds of thousands but which has since been largely ignored by mainstream research, historical narratives focused upon political parties and showing little awareness of the importance of activist-based history from below .

Mixing up campaigning with simple living, travel and the inevitable bean stews washed with plenty of booze, it’s not an unattractive lifestyle then or now.

His account is disarmingly frank about the problems he encounters along the way. A disapproving though evidently loving father has difficulty understanding the path his son has taken while early enthusiasm for the idea of non-patriarchal relationships is tempered by a recognition that these aren’t always easily achieved in practice.

Determined to earn a living, Savoury also faces discrimination because of politics and appearance. Tales about being sacked after standing up to a racist foreman and a later largely unsuccessful career as a homeopath demonstrate that while anti-capitalist lifestyles can deliver love, adventure and a sense of community, they are rarely helpful in the field of employment.

The end of the book sees him somewhat adrift. The world has moved sharply to the right and towards Thatcherism in particular.

Left and green movements appear unable to mount credible alternatives and even when people do resist defeat seems to follow defeat.

All of this, combined with the recognition that the world can be a lonely and often bleak place, precipitates periods of physical and mental ill health, some of which he continues to struggle with today .

Worth noting, however, is that Savoury remains involved to the present and although the heady optimism of his 20s may well have disappeared, he still holds out for the possibility of radical change.